Abstract
Campylobacter jejuni is a major pathogen in bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide and can cause bacteremia in severe cases. C. jejuni is highly structured into clonal lineages of which the ST677CC lineage has been overrepresented among C. jejuni isolates derived from blood. In this study, we characterized the genomes of 31 C. jejuni blood isolates and 24 faecal isolates belonging to ST677CC in order to study the genome biology related to C. jejuni invasiveness. We combined the genome analyses with phenotypical evidence on serum resistance which was associated with phase variation of wcbK; a GDP-mannose 4,6-dehydratase involved in capsular biosynthesis. We also describe the finding of a Type III restriction-modification system unique to the ST-794 sublineage. However, features previously considered to be related to pathogenesis of C. jejuni were either absent or disrupted among our strains. Our results refine the role of capsule features associated with invasive disease and accentuate the possibility of methylation and restriction enzymes in the potential of C. jejuni to establish invasive infections. Our findings underline the importance of studying clinically relevant well-characterized bacterial strains in order to understand pathogenesis mechanisms important in human infections.
Highlights
Campylobacter jejuni is a major pathogen in bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide and can cause bacteremia in severe cases
Most infections are caused by C. jejuni and considered the main precedent for the development of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS); a severe demyelinating neuropathy, which is estimated to occur in 1/1.000-10.000 Campylobacter cases[3,4]
A second whole genome alignment of the ST677CC strains only (n = 63, including the 55 strains characterized in this study) revealed that the two sublineages, sequence types (STs)-677 and ST-794, showed different distribution patterns; ST-677 was not confined to a single cluster, whereas ST-794 was mainly found in one cluster together with several ST-677 strains (Fig. 1)
Summary
Campylobacter jejuni is a major pathogen in bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide and can cause bacteremia in severe cases. Most infections are caused by C. jejuni and considered the main precedent for the development of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS); a severe demyelinating neuropathy, which is estimated to occur in 1/1.000-10.000 Campylobacter cases[3,4]. Bacteremia, another complication of C. jejuni infection with appreciable mortality rates[5,6,7,8], has been estimated to occur in ~1% of C. jejuni infections[8,9].
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