Comparative evolutionary patterns of Burkholderia cenocepacia and Burkholderia multivorans during chronic co-infection of a cystic fibrosis patient lung

The present study was designed to gain insights into the genetic mechanisms underlying adaptation and diversification by the two most prevalent pathogenic species of the Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc), B. cenocepacia and B. multivorans. For this, we study the evolution of both of these species during coinfection of a CF patient for 4.4 years using genome sequences of 9 B. multivorans and 11 B. cenocepacia. This co-infection spanned at least 3 years following initial infection by B. multivorans and ultimately ended in the patient's death by cepacia syndrome. This study contributes to the understanding of shared and species-specific evolutionary patterns of B. cenocepacia and B. multivorans evolving in the same CF lung environment. The sequences are deposited herein. This work is the result of a collaboration between members of the research group of Isabel Sá-Correia: A. Amir Hassan and Sandra C. dos Santos at the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB), Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and Vaughn Cooper from the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, USA. Original Research published in Front. Microbiol. - Evolutionary and Genomic Microbiology, Submitted on: 20 Jun 2020, Edited by: Jianying Gu Reviewed by: Joanna Goldberg, Jonathan J Dennis DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.574626