Publications related to Cholera

Genome sequences of Vibrio cholerae strains isolated in the DRC between 2009 and 2012

Melanie Blokesch, Sandrine Stutzmann, Alexandre Lemopoulos, Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr

Vibrio cholerae has caused seven cholera pandemics in the past two centuries. The seventh and ongoing pandemic has been particularly severe on the African continent. Here, we report long read-based genome sequences of six V. cholerae strains isolated in th ...

2024

Dangerous acquaintances: the interplay between type IV pili and the type VI secretion system during Vibrio cholerae's environmental lifestyle

Simon Bernhard Otto

Cholera, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, has affected humanity throughout history and still impacts millions of people every year. Apart from being a human pathogen, V. cholerae is a common member of the aquatic environment. Due to this natural re ...

EPFL2024

Interactions between pili affect the outcome of bacterial competition driven by the type VI secretion system

Melanie Blokesch, Anne-Florence Raphaëlle Bitbol, Alexandre Lemopoulos, Simon Bernhard Otto, Richard Marie Servajean

The bacterial type VI secretion system (T6SS) is a widespread, kin-discriminatory weapon capable of shaping microbial communities. Due to the system’s dependency on contact, cellular interactions can lead to either competition or kin protection. Cell-to-ce ...

2024

Sporadic type VI secretion in seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae

Melanie Blokesch, Sandrine Stutzmann, Nicolas René Chiaruttini, Alexis Joseph Proutière, Loriane Bader, Lisa Christina Metzger, Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr, Sandrine Natacha Isaac

Vibrio cholerae is a pathogen that causes disease in millions of people every year by colonizing the small intestine and then secreting the potent cholera toxin. How the pathogen overcomes the colonization barrier created by the host’s natural microbiota i ...

2023

Epidemicity of cholera spread and the fate of infection control measures

Andrea Rinaldo, Cristiano Trevisin, Lorenzo Mari, Joseph Chadi Benoit Lemaitre, Damiano Pasetto, Marino Gatto

The fate of ongoing infectious disease outbreaks is predicted through reproduction numbers, defining the long-term establishment of the infection, and epidemicity indices, tackling the reactivity of the infectious pool to new contagions. Prognostic metrics ...

2022

How Vibrio cholerae adapts to the environment: from cell shape transitions to antagonistic behavior

Leonardo Filipe Lemos Rocha

The bacterium Vibrio cholerae is the causative agent of the diarrheal disease cholera, which affects millions of people every year. Apart from being a human pathogen, V. cholerae is also a common member of aquatic habitats. Whilst the mechanism that allow ...

EPFL2022

Two defence systems eliminate plasmids from seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae

Melanie Blokesch, David William Adams, Milena Jadwiga Jaskolska

Horizontal gene transfer can trigger rapid shifts in bacterial evolution. Driven by a variety of mobile genetic elements—in particular bacteriophages and plasmids—the ability to share genes within and across species underpins the exceptional adaptability o ...

2022

The molecular treasure box of environmental Vibrio cholerae strains

Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr

Cholera pandemics have been affecting humankind for centuries and are still considered a major public health problem, especially in regions around the world with poor access to clean water and sanitation. Cholera pandemics are caused by a specific lineage ...

EPFL2021

Harnessing the Membrane Translocation Properties of AB Toxins for Therapeutic Applications

Françoise Gisou van der Goot Grunberg, Oksana Andrei Sergeeva

Over the last few decades, proteins and peptides have become increasingly more common as FDA-approved drugs, despite their inefficient delivery due to their inability to cross the plasma membrane. In this context, bacterial two-component systems, termed AB ...

2021

Modeling infectious disease dynamics towards informed public health interventions, with applications on COVID-19 and cholera

Joseph Chadi Benoit Lemaitre

Emerging and existing infectious diseases pose a constant threat to individuals and communities across the world. In many cases, the burden of these diseases is preventable through public health interventions. However, taking the right decisions and design ...

EPFL2021

Comparison of chitin‐induced natural transformation in pandemic Vibrio cholerae O1 El Tor strains

Melanie Blokesch, Sandrine Stutzmann

The human pathogen Vibrio cholerae serves as a model organism for many important processes ranging from pathogenesis to natural transformation, which has been extensively studied in this bacterium. Previous work has deciphered important regulatory circuits ...

2020

Interbacterial competition and anti‐predatory behavior of environmental Vibrio cholerae strains

Melanie Blokesch, Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr

Vibrio cholerae isolates responsible for cholera pandemics represent only a small portion of the diverse strains belonging to this species. Indeed, most V. cholerae are encountered in aquatic environments. To better understand the emergence of pandemic lin ...

2020

Rainfall as a driver of epidemic cholera: Comparative model assessments of the effect of intra-seasonal precipitation events

Andrea Rinaldo, Damiano Pasetto, Francisco Javier Perez Saez, Joseph Chadi Benoit Lemaitre, Carla Sciarra

The correlation between cholera epidemics and climatic drivers, in particular seasonal tropical rainfall, has been studied in a variety of contexts owing to its documented relevance. Several mechanistic models of cholera transmission have included rainfall ...

2019

Vibrio cholerae filamentation promotes chitin surface attachment at the expense of competition in biofilms

Alexandre Louis André Persat

Collective behavior in spatially structured groups, or biofilms, is the norm among microbes in their natural environments. Though biofilm formation has been studied for decades, tracing the mechanistic and ecological links between individual cell morpholog ...

National Academy of Sciences2019

Two nanomachines drive evolution in diverse Vibrio species

Noémie Matthey

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has a major impact on bacterial evolution, leading to acquisition or deletion of genes and gene clusters, including those encoding antibiotic resistances and virulence factors. HGT therefore contributes to pathogen emergence, ...

EPFL2019

Neighbor predation linked to natural competence fosters the transfer of large genomic regions in Vibrio cholerae

Melanie Blokesch, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Sandrine Stutzmann, Christian Iseli, Candice Stoudmann, Noémie Matthey

Natural competence for transformation is a primary mode of horizontal gene transfer. Competent bacteria are able to absorb free DNA from their surroundings and exchange this DNA against pieces of their own genome when sufficiently homologous. However, the ...

2019

The potential impact of case-area targeted interventions in response to cholera outbreaks: A modeling study

Andrea Rinaldo, Enrico Bertuzzo, Flavio Finger

Background Cholera prevention and control interventions targeted to neighbors of cholera cases (case-area targeted interventions [CATIs]), including improved water, sanitation, and hygiene, oral cholera vaccine (OCV), and prophylactic antibiotics, may be a ...

2018

Long-Read-Based Genome Sequences of Pandemic and Environmental Vibrio cholerae Strains

Noémie Matthey, Melanie Blokesch, Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr

The bacterium Vibrio cholerae exhibits two distinct lifestyles, one as an aquatic bacterium and the other as the etiological agent of the pandemic human disease cholera. Here, we report closed genome sequences of two seventh pandemic V. cholerae O1 El Tor ...

2018

Molecular insights into Vibrio cholerae’s intra-amoebal host-pathogen interactions

Graham Knott, Melanie Blokesch, Sandrine Stutzmann, Candice Stoudmann, Catherine Maclachlan, Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr, Charles Ulric V Van der Henst, Tiziana Scrignari, Audrey Sophie Vanhove

Vibrio cholerae, which causes the diarrheal disease cholera, is a species of bacteria commonlyfound in aquatic habitats. Within such environments, the bacterium must defend itselfagainst predatory protozoan grazers. Amoebae are prominent grazers, withAcant ...

Nature Research2018

Bacterial type VI secretion system facilitates niche domination

Melanie Blokesch, Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr

Over the last few decades humanity has experienced a series of tremendous technological advances, especially in the realm of basic science. A plethora of new approaches has allowed us to appreciate life in previously unimaginable detail, prompting the real ...

2018