Comparing genomes of Helicobacter pylori strains from the high-altitude desert of Ladakh, India

The genomic diversity of Helicobacter pylori from the vast Indian subcontinent is largely unknown. We compared the genomes of 10 H. pylori strains from Ladakh, North India. Molecular analysis was carried out to identify rearrangements within and outside the cag pathogenicity island (cag PAI) and DNA sequence divergence in candidate genes. Analyses of virulence genes (such as the cag PAI as a whole, cagA, vacA, iceA, oipA, babB, and the plasticity cluster) revealed that H. pylori strains from Ladakh are genetically distinct and possibly less virulent than the isolates from East Asian countries, such as China and Japan. Phylogenetic analyses based on the cagA-glr motifs, enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus patterns, repetitive extragenic palindromic signatures, the glmM gene mutations, and several genomic markers representing fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphisms revealed that Ladakhi strains share features of the Indo-European, as well as the East Asian, gene pools. However, the contribution of genetic features from the Indo-European gene pool was more prominent.