Abstract

The bacterium Helicobacter pylori colonizes the gastric mucosa of half of the human population, resulting in chronic gastritis, ulcers, and cancer. We sequenced ten gene fragments from pairs of strains isolated sequentially at a mean interval of 1.8 years from 26 individuals. Several isolates had acquired small mosaic segments from other H. pylori or point mutations. The maximal mutation rate, the import size, and the frequency of recombination were calculated by using a Bayesian model. The calculations indicate that the last common ancestor of H. pylori existed at least 2,500–11,000 years ago. Imported mosaics have a median size of 417 bp, much smaller than for other bacteria, and recombination occurs frequently (60 imports spanning 25,000 bp per genome per year). Thus, the panmictic population structure of H. pylori results from very frequent recombination during mixed colonization by unrelated strains.

Keywords

Helicobacter pyloriBiologyRecombinationGeneticsPopulationMutationGastritisMutation ratePoint mutationChronic gastritisGastric mucosaGeneStomachMedicine

Affiliated Institutions

Related Publications

Publication Info

Year
2001
Type
article
Volume
98
Issue
26
Pages
15056-15061
Citations
431
Access
Closed

External Links

View on DOI.org

Social Impact

Altmetric
PlumX Metrics

Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions

Citation Metrics

431
OpenAlex

Cite This

Daniel Falush, Christian Kraft, Nancy S. Taylor et al. (2001). Recombination and mutation during long-term gastric colonization by <i>Helicobacter pylori</i> : Estimates of clock rates, recombination size, and minimal age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 98 (26) , 15056-15061. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.251396098

Identifiers

DOI
10.1073/pnas.251396098