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Identification of novel pneumolysin alleles from paediatric carriage isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae

Jefferies, J.M.C., Tocheva, A.S., Rubery, H., Bennett, J., Garland, Joanna, Christodoulides, Myron, Faust, S.N., Smith, A.G., Mitchell, T.J. and Clarke, S.C. (2010) Identification of novel pneumolysin alleles from paediatric carriage isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Journal of Medical Microbiology, 59, (7), 808-814. (doi:10.1099/jmm.0.018663-0) (PMID:20339017)

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Description/Abstract

Pneumolysin (Ply) is a major virulence factor of Streptococcus pneumoniae and is produced by all known clinical isolates of pneumococci. Pneumolysin toxoids are being considered as vaccine candidates. We investigated the diversity of pneumolysin among 194 nasopharyngeal pneumococci characterized by serotyping and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Eight Ply protein alleles were identified, four of which were novel. The 4 novel alleles varied at 10 different amino acid positions, from a total of 147, 3 of these substitutions have been previously reported in different combinations. The protein allele correlated closely with MLST. It is critical that the presence of pneumolysin variants is considered with regards to the potential use of Ply in future vaccine formulations, as variation in Ply amino acid sequence may influence the immunogenicity of vaccines based on the presence of an individual Ply allele.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the ply gene sequences of S. pneumoniae reported in this work are GU968217 to GU968411.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:0022-2615 (print)
1473-5644 (electronic)
Uncontrolled Keywords:gdna, genomic dna, mlst, multilocus sequence typing, st, sequence type
Subjects:Q Science > QH Natural history > QH426 Genetics
Q Science > QR Microbiology > QR180 Immunology
R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics
Divisions:University Structure - Pre August 2011 > School of Medicine > Infection, Inflammation and Repair
ePrint ID:162277
Deposited On:17 Aug 2010 16:51
Last Modified:01 Jun 2011 08:47

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