Abstract
Campylobacteriosis remains a major human public health problem world-wide. Genetic analyses of Campylobacter isolates, and particularly molecular epidemiology, have been central to the study of this disease, particularly the characterization of Campylobacter genotypes isolated from human infection, farm animals, and retail food. These studies have demonstrated that Campylobacter populations are highly structured, with distinct genotypes associated with particular wild or domestic animal sources, and that chicken meat is the most likely source of most human infection in countries such as the UK. The availability of multiple whole genome sequences from Campylobacter isolates presents the prospect of identifying those genes or allelic variants responsible for host-association and increased human disease risk, but the diversity of Campylobacter genomes present challenges for such analyses. We present a gene-by-gene approach for investigating the genetic basis of phenotypes in diverse bacteria such as Campylobacter, implemented with the BIGSDB software on the pubMLST.org/campylobacter website.
Highlights
Genetic analyses of Campylobacter isolates, and molecular epidemiology, have been central to the study of this disease, the characterization of Campylobacter genotypes isolated from human infection, farm animals, and retail food
A single scheme is used for both C. jejuni and C. coli and has enabled both inter- and intra-species diversity to be defined and separate multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) schemes have been developed for other members of the genus [11,12]
An additional challenge is that any comparison based on a single reference isolate will divide a comparator population into two categories: those which are like the reference and those which are unlike the reference. This can lead to misinterpretations of the data, as for example, in a study in which the gene contents of 111 C. jejuni isolates, principally from disease and host animal sources, were compared using a microarray based on the genome sequence of the ST-21 complex disease isolate, NCTC 11168 [46]
Summary
Campylobacteriosis, caused by infection of humans with Campylobacter species, is one of the most common forms of bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide, affecting large numbers of people in both industrialized and non-industrialized countries [1]. The burden of this food-borne disease in the UK, for example, has been estimated at more than 400,000 cases annually, at a cost of some £580 million each year to the economy [2]. A number of features of the biology of the disease-associated members of the genus Campylobacter have made genome-wide analyses especially important in improving our understanding of these pathogens and, as our capacity to collect whole genome sequence data increase [6], it is likely that these approaches will continue to play an important role in reducing the burden of human campylobacteriosis
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