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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Athens, Georgia » U.S. National Poultry Research Center » Poultry Microbiological Safety and Processing Research Unit » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #289149
Title: Characterization of the Campylobacter jejuni cryptic plasmid pTIW94 recovered from wild birds in the southeastern United States

Author
item Hiett, Kelli
item Rothrock, Michael
item Seal, Bruce

Submitted to: Plasmid Journal
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/17/2013
Publication Date: 9/1/2013
Citation: Hiett, K.L., Rothrock Jr, M.J., Seal, B.S. 2013. Characterization of the Campylobacter jejuni cryptic plasmid pTIW94 recovered from wild birds in the southeastern United States . Plasmid Journal. 70:268-271.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: The complete nucleotide sequence of a cryptic plasmid, pTIW94, recovered from several Campylobacter jejuni isolates from wild birds in the southeastern United States, was determined. All plasmids were circular molecules of 3865 nucleotides, with a G+C content of 31.0%, similar to that of Campylobacter spp. A total of five open reading frames (ORFs) were identified; three of the five ORFs demonstrated significant similarity to plasmid pCC2228-2 found within Campylobacter coli. These three ORFs included the mobilization gene (mob; 97% similarity), and two ORFs similar to essential replication genes (98% to repA; 95% to repB). The other two identified ORFs were either similar to hypothetical proteins from other Campylobacter spp., or exhibited no significant similarity to any DNA or protein sequence in the GenBank database. Promoter regions (-35 and -10 signal sites), ribosomal binding sites upstream of ORFs, and stem-loop structures were also identified within the plasmid, however, no interons were found. These results imply that pTIW94 represents a previously un-described small cryptic plasmid with unique sequences as well as highly similar sequences to other small plasmids found within Campylobacter spp., and that this cryptic plasmid is present among different genera of wild birds. Considering plasmid pTIW94 was isolated from C. jejuni but exhibited high similarities to plasmids from C. coli and C. upsaliensis, the results demonstrate the promiscuous nature of Campylobacter spp.