Genomic resolution of an aggressive, widespread, diverse and expanding meningococcal serogroup B, C and W lineage.

Jay Lucidarme (1) , Dorothea M. C. Hill (2) , Holly B. Bratcher (2) , Steve J. Gray (3) , Mignon Du Plessis (4) , Ray S. W. Tsang (5) , Julio A. Vazquez (6) , Muhamed-Kheir Taha (7) , Mehmet Ceyhan (8) , Adriana M. Efron (9) , Maria C. Gorla (10) , Jamie Findlow (11) , Keith A. Jolley (2) , Martin C. J. Maiden (2) , Ray Borrow (1, 3)

1 Vaccine Evaluation Unit [Manchester]
2 Department of Zoology [Oxford]
3 MRU - Meningococcal Reference Unit
4 Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis, a division of the National Health Laboratory Services
5 National Microbiology Laboratory [Winnipeg, Canada]
6 ISC - Instituto de Salud Carlos III [Madrid]
7 CNR - Centre National de Référence des Méningocoques et Haemophilus influenzae - National Reference Center Meningococci and Haemophilus influenzae
8 Faculty of Medicine [Hacettepe University]
9 INEI - Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Infecciosas- ANLIS Carlos Malbrán [Buenos Aires]
10 Instituto Adolfo Lutz [São Paulo, Brazil]
11 Manchester Royal Infirmary

Neisseria meningitidis is a leading cause of meningitis and septicaemia. The hyperinvasive ST-11 clonal complex (cc11) caused serogroup C (MenC) outbreaks in the US military in the 1960s and UK universities in the 1990s, a global Hajj-associated serogroup W (MenW) outbreak in 2000-2001, and subsequent MenW epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. More recently, endemic MenW disease has expanded in South Africa, South America and the UK, and MenC cases have been reported among European and North American men who have sex with men (MSM). Routine typing schemes poorly resolve cc11 so we established the population structure at genomic resolution.

Keywords: Genome; Meningococcal; ST-11 clonal complex; Serogroup C; Serogroup W

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Biochemistry, Molecular Biology; Genomics [q-bio.GN]; Life Sciences [q-bio]; Santé publique et épidémiologie

Jay Lucidarme, Dorothea M. C. Hill, Holly B. Bratcher, Steve J. Gray, Mignon Du Plessis, et al.. Genomic resolution of an aggressive, widespread, diverse and expanding meningococcal serogroup B, C and W lineage.. Journal of Infection, 2015, 71 (5), pp.544-552. ⟨10.1016/j.jinf.2015.07.007⟩. ⟨pasteur-02013265⟩