Prevalence and molecular characterization of FIM H gene in Escherichia coli isolates recovered from patients with utis

Abstract EN

In this study, the prevalence of fim H gene was studied among 105 E.

coli isolates obtained from urine samples of patients attended Azadi hospital in Duhok City.

The intended gene was detected in94.3% of the isolates.

Triplex PCR assay was applied and according to which the studied isolates were assigned into four groups namely A, B1, B2, and D groups which constituted 20.95 %, 3.8 %, 54.28 %, 20.95 %, respectively.

Ten randomly selected isolates were subjected to SNPs fimH analysis with 3 reference strains of E.

coli.

The results revealed that 44 SNPs observed at 42 polymorphic sites accounting for 5.59%.

All mutations were of substitutions and 29.5 % of mutations were transversions while transition type mutations constituted of 70.5 %.

Ten SNPs accounting for 22.7 % of mutations gave rise to amino-acid changes (sense mutation) while the rest 34 (77.3 %) resulted in silent mutations.

Moreover, twelve SNPs were singletons and among them five were with amino acid replacements.

Amino acid replacements due to SNPs accounted for 1.27% of whole sequenced fragment of fimH.It can be concluded that there is no relationship inferred between the isolates of E.coli when the two phylotyping techniques are compared but the results of both can serve the purpose of genotypic characterization of uropathogenic E.

coli.