Global diversity of H. pylori genomes. Helicobacter pylori

Helicobacter pylori infection is a well known factor associated with gastroduodenal diseases such as gastritis, gastric cancer, duodenal ulcer, etc. This bacterium mainly transmits within families and the infection last lifetime long if not eradicated. It is known that the phylogeny of H. pylori corresponds well with that of host human. Taking advantage of this parallelism, we could speculate the divergence of human populations by analyzing the genomes of H. pylori. One of our aims is to follow the traces of ancient human migrations by H. pylori. Another aim is to find new virulence genes of H. pylori. We collected samples from various Asian countries, as well as North and South America and sequenced their genomes to exert genetic and population analyses.