Subtyping analysis reveals new variants and accelerated evolution of Clostridioides difficile toxin B

Commun Biol. 2020 Jul 3;3(1):347. doi: 10.1038/s42003-020-1078-y.

Abstract

Clostridioides difficile toxins (TcdA and TcdB) are major exotoxins responsible for C. difficile infection (CDI) associated diseases. The previously reported TcdB variants showed distinct biological features, immunoactivities, and potential pathogenicity in disease progression. Here, we performed global comparisons of amino acid sequences of both TcdA and TcdB from 3,269 C. difficile genomes and clustered them according to the evolutionary relatedness. We found that TcdB was much diverse and could be divided into eight subtypes, of which four were first described. Further analysis indicates that the tcdB gene undergoes accelerated evolution to maximize diversity. By tracing TcdB subtypes back to their original isolates, we found that the distribution of TcdB subtypes was not completely aligned with the phylogeny of C. difficile. These findings suggest that the tcdB genes not only frequently mutate, but also continuously transfer and exchange among C. difficile strains.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Bacterial Proteins / classification*
  • Bacterial Proteins / genetics*
  • Bacterial Toxins / classification*
  • Bacterial Toxins / genetics*
  • Clostridioides difficile / classification
  • Clostridioides difficile / genetics
  • Clostridioides difficile / pathogenicity*
  • Clostridium Infections / genetics
  • Clostridium Infections / microbiology*
  • Enterotoxins / genetics
  • Evolution, Molecular*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Mice, Inbred C57BL
  • Multilocus Sequence Typing
  • Phylogeny
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
  • Whole Genome Sequencing

Substances

  • Bacterial Proteins
  • Bacterial Toxins
  • Enterotoxins
  • tcdA protein, Clostridium difficile
  • toxB protein, Clostridium difficile