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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Albany, California » Western Regional Research Center » Produce Safety and Microbiology Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #231656
Title: First multilocus sequence typing scheme for Arcobacter spp.

Author
item Miller, William - Bill
item Wesley, Irene
item ON, STEVEN - ESR NEW ZEALAND
item HOUF, KURT - GHENT UNIV. BELGIUM
item MEGRAUD, FRANCIS - UNV.VICTOR SEGALEN,FRANCE
item WANG, GUILIN - REROTI&CARADE,LARKSPUR CA
item Yee, Emma
item SRIJAN, APICHAI - AFRIMS, THAILAND
item MASON, CARL - AFRIMS, THAILAND

Submitted to: BMC Microbiology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/4/2009
Publication Date: 9/14/2009
Citation: Miller, W.G., Wesley, I.V., On, S., Houf, K., Megraud, F., Wang, G., Yee, E., Srijan, A., Mason, C. 2009. First multilocus sequence typing scheme for Arcobacter spp.. BMC Microbiology. doi:10.1186/1471-2180-9-196

Interpretive Summary: Although food-borne pathogens like Campylobacter jejuni are major causal agents of gastroenteritis world-wide, other less well-characterized food-borne organisms have been implicated increasingly in human disease. Some of these organisms are found in the bacterial group Arcobacter. Arcobacters, relatives of C. jejuni, are common food and water contaminants and cause the same clinical disease symptoms as C. jejuni. However, Arcobacters have been isolated from both sick and healthy patients. Thus, distinguishing between Arcobacter strains is important in clinical situations and in the investigations of Arcobacter-related food-borne outbreaks. Thus study describes a novel DNA sequence-based typing method which can accurately and unambiguously fingerprint Arcobacter strains within a species and distinguish readily strains of different species. The large number of gene and gene profile types makes thus method useful for clinical identification and outbreak investigations.

Technical Abstract: Arcobacter spp. are a common contaminant of food and water, and some species, primarily A. butzleri and A. cryaerophilus, have been isolated increasingly from human diarrheal stool samples. Here, we describe a novel Arcobacter multilocus sequence typing (MLST) method suitable for typing A. butzleri, A. cryaerophilus, A. skirrowii and A. cibarius. The seven loci used in this method for all Arcobacter species are the same as those used previously in C. jejuni, C. coli, C. helveticus and C. fetus (i.e. aspA, atpA(uncA), glnA, gltA, glyA, pgm and tkt). A sample set of 401 arcobacters, including 296 A. butzleri, 74 A. cryaerophilus and 15 A. skirrowii isolates from a wide variety of geographic locations and sources, was typed in this study. Additionally, four strains representing a novel Arcobacter clade, A. ‘skirrowii-like’ were characterized. A large number of alleles were identified at each locus with the majority of isolates containing a unique sequence type. All Arcobacter isolates typed in this study contain two glyA genes, one linked to lysS (glyA1) and the other linked to ada (glyA2); glyA1 was incorporated into the Arcobacter MLST method. glyA2 was sequenced for nearly all of the Arcobacter isolates; however, addition of glyA2 to the MLST method did not increase substantially the level of discrimination. No association of MLST alleles or sequence types with host was observed with this sample set. Nevertheless, the large number of identified alleles and sequence types indicate that this MLST method will prove useful in both Arcobacter strain discrimination and epidemiology.