ArticlePloS one2017
Comparative Genome Sequencing Reveals Within-Host Genetic Changes in Neisseria meningitidis during Invasive Disease.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 33 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microevolution of Neisseria lactamica during nasopharyngeal colonisation induced by controlled human infection.Nature communications · 2018Trial
- Put your money where your mouth is: surveillance of antibiotic resistance within the commensalMicrobiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Put your money where your mouth is: Surveillance of antibiotic resistance within the commensalbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Investigation of invasiveFrontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Review
- Sweet complexity:Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2024Review
- Microevolution and Its Impact on Hypervirulence, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Vaccine Escape inMicroorganisms · 2023Review
- Genomic analysis ofNew microbes and new infections · 2023Article
- Within-host evolution of bacterial pathogens during persistent infection of humans.Current opinion in microbiology · 2022Review
- Transmission Dynamics and Microevolution of Neisseria meningitidis During Carriage and Invasive Disease in High School Students in Georgia and Maryland, 2006-2007.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2021Article
- Molecular insights into meningococcal carriage isolates from Burkina Faso 7 years after introduction of a serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine.Microbial genomics · 2020Article
- Insights on Population Structure and Within-Host Genetic Changes among Meningococcal Carriage Isolates from U.S. Universities.mSphere · 2020Article
- Genomic epidemiology and population structure ofMicrobial genomics · 2020Article
- Neisseria meningitidis: using genomics to understand diversity, evolution and pathogenesis.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2020Review
- Atypical, Yet Not Infrequent, Infections withPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
- Potentiation of Phase Variation in Multiple Outer-Membrane Proteins During Spread of the Hyperinvasive Neisseria meningitidis Serogroup W ST-11 Lineage.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2019Article
- The CRISPR/Cas system in Neisseria meningitidis affects bacterial adhesion to human nasopharyngeal epithelial cells.RNA biology · 2019Article
- Epidemiology of two decades of invasive meningococcal disease in the Republic of Ireland: an analysis of national surveillance data on laboratory-confirmed cases from 1996 to 2016.Epidemiology and infection · 2019Article
- Genus-Wide Comparative Genomics Analysis ofInternational journal of genomics · 2019Article
- Phase-Variable Genotypes Sweetened by Glycosylation Phenotypes.Journal of bacteriology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Some members of the physiological human microbiome occasionally cause life-threatening disease even in immunocompetent individuals. A prime example of such a commensal pathogen is Neisseria meningitidis, which normally resides in the human nasopharynx but is also a leading cause of sepsis and epidemic meningitis. Using N. meningitidis as model organism, we tested the hypothesis that virulence of commensal pathogens is a consequence of within host evolution and selection of invasive variants due to mutations at contingency genes, a mechanism called phase variation. In line with the hypothesis that phase variation evolved as an adaptation to colonize diverse hosts, computational comparisons of all 27 to date completely sequenced and annotated meningococcal genomes retrieved from public databases showed that contingency genes are indeed enriched for genes involved in host interactions. To assess within-host genetic changes in meningococci, we further used ultra-deep whole-genome sequencing of throat-blood strain pairs isolated from four patients suffering from invasive meningococcal disease. We detected up to three mutations per strain pair, affecting predominantly contingency genes involved in type IV pilus biogenesis. However, there was not a single (set) of mutation(s) that could invariably be found in all four pairs of strains. Phenotypic assays further showed that these genetic changes were generally not associated with increased serum resistance, higher fitness in human blood ex vivo or differences in the interaction with human epithelial and endothelial cells in vitro. In conclusion, we hypothesize that virulence of meningococci results from accidental emergence of invasive variants during carriage and without within host evolution of invasive phenotypes during disease progression in vivo.
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