Highly Divergent Clostridium difficile Strains Isolated from the Environment

Clostridium difficile is one of the most important human and animal pathogens. However, the bacterium is ubiquitous and can be isolated from various sources. Here we report the prevalence and characterization of C. difficile in less studied environmental samples, puddle water (n = 104) and soil (n =...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2016-11, Vol.11 (11), p.e0167101
Main Authors: Janezic, Sandra, Potocnik, Mojca, Zidaric, Valerija, Rupnik, Maja
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Antibiotics
Antimicrobial agents
Antimicrobial resistance
Bacteria
Biology and Life Sciences
Clostridium difficile
Clostridium difficile - genetics
Clostridium difficile - isolation & purification
Drug resistance
Drug Resistance, Bacterial - genetics
Earth Sciences
Evolution
Filtering systems
Food
Genetic Variation
Genotype
Humans
Laboratories
Medicine and Health Sciences
Phylogeny
Pollution
Population genetics
Research and Analysis Methods
Ribosomal DNA
Risk factors
Rural areas
Soil water
Water Microbiology
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Summary:Clostridium difficile is one of the most important human and animal pathogens. However, the bacterium is ubiquitous and can be isolated from various sources. Here we report the prevalence and characterization of C. difficile in less studied environmental samples, puddle water (n = 104) and soil (n = 79). C. difficile was detected in 14.4% of puddle water and in 36.7% of soil samples. Environmental strains displayed antimicrobial resistance patterns comparable to already published data of human and animal isolates. A total of 480 isolates were grouped into 34 different PCR ribotypes. More than half of these (52.9%; 18 of 34) were already described in humans or animals. However, 14 PCR ribotypes were new in our PCR ribotype library and all but one were non-toxigenic. The multilocus sequence analysis of these new PCR ribotypes revealed that non-toxigenic environmental isolates are phylogenetically distinct and belong to three highly divergent clades, two of which have not been described before. Our data suggest that environment is a potential reservoir of genetically diverse population of C. difficile.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0167101