Abstract
Campylobacter jejuni is the leading bacterial cause of gastroenteritis worldwide with excessive incidence in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC). During a survey for C. jejuni from putative animal hosts in a town in the Peruvian Amazon, we were able to isolate and whole genome sequence two C. jejuni strains from domesticated guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus). The C. jejuni isolated from guinea pigs had a novel multilocus sequence type that shared some alleles with other C. jejuni collected from guinea pigs. Average nucleotide identity and phylogenetic analysis with a collection of C. jejuni subsp. jejuni and C. jejuni subsp. doylei suggest that the guinea pig isolates are distinct. Genomic comparisons demonstrated gene gain and loss that could be associated with guinea pig host specialization related to guinea pig diet, anatomy, and physiology including the deletion of genes involved with selenium metabolism, including genes encoding the selenocysteine insertion machinery and selenocysteine-containing proteins.
Highlights
The Gram-negative zoonotic bacteria Campylobacter jejuni is a principal cause of bacterial foodborne illness worldwide
We examined the relationship between these strains, along with a collection of Peruvian clinical C. jejuni subsp. jejuni (Cjj) strains (Pascoe et al, 2020), and well-studied Cjj strains with complete genomes, three C. jejuni subsp. doylei (Cjd) strains, and a C. coli strain (Supplementary Table 1)
The first cluster was within the Cjj clade, and the other cluster that contains the isolates from Peru formed a clade distinct from the other C. jejuni subspecies
Summary
The Gram-negative zoonotic bacteria Campylobacter jejuni is a principal cause of bacterial foodborne illness worldwide. Aside from poultry and ruminants, C. jejuni has been detected and isolated from numerous different birds (Cody et al, 2015; Atterby et al, 2018; Lawton et al, 2018) and a variety of mammalian species, including but not limited to raccoons, rodents and lagomorphs (Graham et al, 2016; Mutschall et al, 2020) Among these host, wild birds are often colonized by host specialist C. jejuni (Cody et al, 2015; Lawton et al, 2018; Atterby et al, 2018). The analysis of genomes of C. jejuni strains isolated from guinea pigs provided evidence of considerable novel alterations including to gene gain and loss that presumably have allowed adaption to the guinea pig host
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