Abstract
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.