Analysis of Genetic Characterization and Clonality of Legionella pneumophila Isolated from Cooling Towers in Japan

Noriko Nakanishi, Ryohei Nomoto, Shinobu Tanaka, Kentaro Arikawa and Tomotada Iwamoto
Additional contact information
Noriko Nakanishi: Department of Infectious Diseases, Kobe Institute of Health, 4-6-5 Minatojima-nakamichi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0046, Japan
Ryohei Nomoto: Department of Infectious Diseases, Kobe Institute of Health, 4-6-5 Minatojima-nakamichi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0046, Japan
Shinobu Tanaka: Department of Infectious Diseases, Kobe Institute of Health, 4-6-5 Minatojima-nakamichi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0046, Japan
Kentaro Arikawa: Department of Infectious Diseases, Kobe Institute of Health, 4-6-5 Minatojima-nakamichi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0046, Japan
Tomotada Iwamoto: Department of Infectious Diseases, Kobe Institute of Health, 4-6-5 Minatojima-nakamichi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0046, Japan

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 9, 1-9

Abstract: We investigated the genetic characteristics of 161 Legionella pneumophila strains isolated over a period of 10 years from cooling towers in Japan. Minimum spanning tree analysis based on the sequence-based typing (SBT) of them identified three clonal complexes (CCs); CC1 (105/161, 65.2%), CC2 (22 /161, 13.7%), and CC3 (20/161, 12.4%). CC1 was formed by serogroup (SG) 1 and SG7, whereas CC2 was mainly formed by SG1. All of the CC3 isolates except two strains were SG13. The major sequence types (STs) in CC1 and CC2 were ST1 (88/105, 83.8%) and ST154 (15/22, 68.2%), respectively. These STs are known as typical types of L. pneumophila SG1 in Japanese cooling tower. Additionally, we identified 15 strains of ST2603 as the major type in CC3. This ST has not been reported in Japanese cooling tower. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) analysis of the representative strains in the three CCs, which were isolated from various cooling towers over the 10 years, elucidated high clonal population of L. pneumophila in Japanese cooling tower. Moreover, it revealed that the strains of CC2 are phylogenetically distant compared to those of CC1 and CC3, and belonged to L. pneumophila subsp. fraseri .

Keywords: Legionella pneumophila; cooling tower; SBT; WGS; single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/9/1664/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/9/1664/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:9:p:1664-:d:230777

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().