Tareq’s efforts and perseverance payed off, he is the new daddy of Vibrio parcholerae sp. nov., which was just published online in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
See the full article at: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/AEM.00422-21
Most efforts to understand the biology of Vibrio cholerae have focused on a single group, the pandemic-generating lineage harbouring the strains responsible for all known cholera pandemics. Consequently, little is known about the diversity of this species in its native aquatic environment. To understand thedifferences in the V. cholerae populations inhabiting regions with a history of cholera cases and thoselacking such a history, a comparative analysis of population composition was performed. Little overlap was found in lineage compositions between those in Dhaka (cholera endemic) located in the Ganges delta, and of Falmouth (no known history of cholera), a small coastal town on the United States east coast. The moststriking difference was the presence of a group of related lineages at high abundance in Dhaka which wascompletely absent from Falmouth. Phylogenomic analysis revealed that these lineages form a cluster at the base of the phylogeny for the V. cholerae species, sufficiently differentiated genetically and phenotypicallyto form a novel species. A retrospective search revealed that strains from this species have been anecdotallyfound from around the world and were isolated as early as 1916 from a British soldier in Egypt suffering from choleraic diarrhoea. In 1935 Gardner and Venkatraman unofficially referred to a member of this group as Vibrio paracholerae. In recognition of this earlier designation, we propose the name Vibrio paracholerae sp. nov. for this bacterium. Genomic analysis suggests a link with human populations forthis novel species and substantial interaction with its better- known sister species.
