Molecular evolution of the meningococcal fragments of 7 house-keeping genes

Abstract

The objective of the article was to determine the variability of meningococcal house-keeping gene alleles circulating in Belarus. House-keeping genes sequencing was made by Sanger (ABI 3500). The phylogenetic analysis was done in MEGA X. SNPs were analyzed at pubMLST.org. 60 Belarusian meningococci, collected during 8 years, contain 17 alleles of abcZ gene (5.9 % first identified in Belarus – abcZ 1016) encoding 5 variants of the ABC transporter; 16 adk gene alleles – 2 variants of adenylate cyclase; 17 alleles of aroE gene (11.8 % Belarusian – aroE 944 and aroE 972) – 14 variants of shikimat dehydrogenase; 24 alleles of fumC gene (4.2 % Belarusian – fumC 988) – 4 variants of fumarate dehydratase; 18 alleles of gdh gene (16.7 % first identified in Belarus – gdh 560, gdh 985 and gdh 1083) – 4 variants of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase; 18 alleles of pdhC gene – 11 variants of pyruvate dehydrogenase subunit and 20 alleles of pgm gene – 13 variants of phosphoglucomutase (5.6 and 5 % of Belarusian alleles − pdhC 888 and pgm 1099 respectively). Dominant alleles are abcZ 8 – 25 %, adk 5 – 30, aroE 6 – 28.3, fumC 17 – 30, gdh 560 – 20, pdhC 18 – 21.7, pgm 2 – 25 %. The Belarusian meningococcal population is diverse and includes both its own house-keeping gene alleles (7.7 %) and those circulating in other countries (92.3 %). The number of SNPs is varied from 29 (adk) to 125 (aroE). Single nucleotide polymorphisms are mostly synonymous and, on average, lead to amino acid substitutions in the range from 0.6 % in adenylate cyclase and up to 26.4 % in shikimat dehydrogenase.