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Journal of Bacteriology, June 2005, p. 4163-4172, Vol. 187, No. 12
0021-9193/05/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.187.12.4163-4172.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Evolution of Transcription Regulatory Genes Is Linked to Niche Specialization in the Bacterial Pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes{dagger}

Debra E. Bessen,* Anand Manoharan, Feng Luo, John E. Wertz, and D. Ashley Robinson

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York

Received 24 January 2005/ Accepted 3 March 2005

Streptococcus pyogenes is a highly prevalent bacterial pathogen, most often giving rise to superficial infections at the throat or skin of its human host. Three genotype-defined subpopulations of strains exhibiting strong tropisms for either the throat or skin (specialists) or having no obvious tissue site preference (generalists) are recognized. Since the microenvironments at the throat and skin are distinct, the signal transduction pathways leading to the control of gene expression may also differ for throat versus skin strains of S. pyogenes. Two loci (mga and rofA/nra) encoding global regulators of virulence gene expression are positioned 300 kb apart on the genome; each contains alleles forming two major sequence clusters of ~25 to 30% divergence that are under balancing selection. Strong linkage disequilibrium is observed between sequence clusters of the transcription regulatory loci and the subpopulations of throat and skin specialists, against a background of high recombination rates among housekeeping genes. A taxonomically distinct commensal species (Streptococcus dysgalactiae subspecies equisimilus) shares highly homologous rof alleles. The findings provide strong support for a mechanism underlying niche specialization that involves orthologous replacement of regulatory genes following interspecies horizontal transfer, although the directionality of gene exchange remains unknown.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY 10595. Phone: (914) 594-4193. Fax: (914) 594-4176. E-mail: debra_bessen{at}nymc.edu.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jb.asm.org/.

Journal of Bacteriology, June 2005, p. 4163-4172, Vol. 187, No. 12
0021-9193/05/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.187.12.4163-4172.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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