COMPARATIVE OMICS ANALYSIS OF HISTORICAL AND RECENT ISOLATES OF BORDETELLA PERTUSSIS

Despite high vaccination coverage, pertussis is on the rise in many countries including Czech Republic. To better understand B. pertussis resurgence we compared the changes in genome structures between Czech vaccine and circulating strains and subsequently, we determined how these changes translated into global transcriptomic and proteomic profiles. The whole-genome sequencing revealed that both historical and recent isolates of B. pertussis display substantial variation in genome organization and cluster separately. The RNA-seq and LC-MS/MS analyses indicate that these variations translated into discretely separated transcriptomic and proteomic profiles. Compared to vaccine strains, recent isolates displayed increased expression of flagellar genes and decreased expression of polysaccharide capsule operon. Czech strains (Bp46, K10, Bp155, Bp318 and Bp6242)exhibited increased expression of T3SS and sulphate metabolism genes when compared to Tohama I. In spite of 50 years of vaccination the Czech vaccine strains (VS67, VS393 and VS401) differ from recent isolates to a lesser extent than from another vaccine strain Tohama I.