Genomic Plasticity of Vibrio cholerae
- Autores: José Antonio Escudero García-Calderón, Didier Mazel
- Localización: International microbiology: official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology, ISSN 1139-6709, Vol. 20, Nº. 3, 2017, págs. 138-148
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
Vibrio cholerae is one of the deadliest pathogens in the history of humankind. It is the causative agent of cholera, adisease characterized by a profuse and watery diarrhoea that still today causes 95.000 deaths worldwide every year. V. choleraeis a free living marine organism that interacts with and infects a variety of organisms, from amoeba to humans, including insectsand crustaceans. The complexity of the lifestyle and ecology of V. cholerae suggests a high genetic and phenotypic plasticity. Inthis review, we will focus on two peculiar genomic features that enhance genetic plasticity in this bacterium: the division of itsgenome in two different chromosomes and the presence of the superintegron, a gene capture device that acts as a large, low-costmemory of adaptive functions, allowing V. cholerae to adapt rapidly.
