Figure 2.

Geo-temporal, serogroup and serotype distributions of meningococcal lineage 11.2 isolates and the distribution of invasive isolates from British and French men who have sex with men. The inset in section (a) indicates the region of cc11 represented by lineage 11.2. The corresponding isolates were compared, along with 71 diverse representatives of lineage 11.1 (Supplementary Table 1 – highlighted yellow), in terms of 1546 core genome loci to generate the Neighbour-net phylogenetic network in sections (a) to (d). The large arrow represents the lineage 11.1 isolates. (a) The relatively populous UK isolates (no marker) were broadly interspersed among isolates from countries representing several continents. (b) The diversification of the sublineage was reflected in the temporal distribution of the isolates, with more recent isolates often observed at the more distal regions of the lineage. Section (c) highlights the distribution of (i) serogroup B isolates which were highly interspersed among the serogroup C isolates (no markers), (ii) MenC:cc11 genomes from the Toronto MSM outbreak (Canada MSM), and (iii) the relatively diverse recent UK and French MSM cases that were interspersed with cases from the wider community. Section (d) depicts the distribution of PorA subtypes in which the isolates in the relatively proximal clusters (versus the origin of the sublineage) were mainly P1.5,2 or P1.5-1,10-4, whilst isolates within more distal clusters were mainly P1.5-1,10-8. The scale bar in section (a) indicates the number of differences among the 1546 loci compared.