PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Valeria Montano AU - Xavier Didelot AU - Matthieu Foll AU - Bodo Linz AU - Richard Reinhardt AU - Sebastian Suerbaum AU - Yoshan Moodley AU - Jeffrey D. Jensen TI - Worldwide population structure, long term demography, and local adaptation of <em>Helicobacter pylori</em> AID - 10.1101/019430 DP - 2015 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 019430 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/05/18/019430.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/05/18/019430.full AB - Helicobacter pylori is an important human pathogen associated with serious gastric diseases. Owing to its medical importance and close relationship with its human host, understanding genomic patterns of global and local adaptation in H. pylori may be of particular significance for both clinical and evolutionary studies. Here we present the first such whole-genome analysis of 60 globally distributed strains, from which we inferred worldwide population structure and demographic history and shed light on interesting global and local events of positive selection, with particular emphasis on the evolution of San-associated lineages. Our results indicate a more ancient origin for the association of humans and H. pylori than previously thought. We identify several important perspectives for future clinical research on candidate selected regions that include both previously characterized genes (e.g. transcription elongation factor NusA and tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha-Inducing Protein TipĪ±) and hitherto unknown functional genes.