The Staphylococcus aureus clonal complex CC121 is a common cause of human skin and soft-tissue infections, as well as the source of a recent epidemic in rabbits. Viana et al. track the evolution of the multi-host tropism of this lineage. Phylogenetic analysis based on whole-genome sequences of a global collection of CC121 clinical strains showed a high level of diversity for the strains isolated from human cases, whereas the strains isolated from rabbits fell into a single clade. The authors' analyses suggest that the most likely explanation for the emergence of the rabbit clade is a single human-to-rabbit host jump occurring more than 40 years ago. They demonstrate that a single naturally occurring mutation in the dltB gene is necessary and sufficient to convert a human-specific S. aureus strain into one that infects rabbits, and they find evidence for convergent evolution at this locus.
References
Viana, D. et al. A single natural nucleotide mutation alters bacterial pathogen host tropism. Nature Genet. http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.3219 (2015)
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Bahcall, O. S. aureus multi-host tropism. Nat Rev Genet 16, 194 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3929
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3929