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Population genetic structure of Helicobacter pylori strains from Portuguese‐speaking countries
Author(s) -
Oleastro Mónica,
Rocha Raquel,
Vale Filipa F.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
helicobacter
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.206
H-Index - 79
eISSN - 1523-5378
pISSN - 1083-4389
DOI - 10.1111/hel.12382
Subject(s) - cape verde , portuguese , multilocus sequence typing , housekeeping gene , biology , population , phylogeography , locus (genetics) , introgression , human migration , genetics , geography , evolutionary biology , demography , gene , genotype , ethnology , phylogenetics , history , linguistics , sociology , philosophy , gene expression
Background The human gastric colonizer Helicobacter pylori is useful to track human migrations given the agreement between the bacterium phylogeographic distribution and human migrations. As Portugal was an African and Brazilian colonizer for over 400 years, we hypothesized that Portuguese isolates were likely genetically closer with those from countries colonized by Portuguese in the past. We aimed to characterize the population structure of several Portuguese‐speaking countries, including Portugal, Brazil, Angola, and Cape Verde. Materials and Methods We included strains isolated in Portugal from Portuguese and from former Portuguese colonies. These strains were typed by multilocus sequence typing ( MLST ) for seven housekeeping genes. We also retrieved from Multi Locus Sequence Typing Web site additional housekeeping gene sequences, namely from Angola and Brazil. Results We provided evidence that strains from Portuguese belong to hpEurope and that the introgression of hpEurope in non‐European countries that speak Portuguese is low, except for Brazil and Cape Verde, where hpEurope accounted for one quarter and one half of the population, respectively. We found genetic similarity for all strains from Portuguese‐speaking countries that belong to hpEurope population. Moreover, these strains showed a predominance of ancestral Europe 2 ( AE 2) over ancestral Europe 1 ( AE 1), followed by ancestral Africa 1. Conclusions H. pylori is a useful marker even for relative recent human migration events and may become rapidly differentiated from founder populations. H. pylori from Portuguese‐speaking countries assigned to hpEurope appears to be a hybrid population resulting from the admixture of AE 1, AE 2 and ancestral hpAfrica1.