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Infection and Immunity, November 1999, p. 6119-6129, Vol. 67, No. 11
0019-9567/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Identification of Regions of the Chromosome of Neisseria
meningitidis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae Which Are
Specific to the Pathogenic Neisseria Species
Agnes
Perrin,
Xavier
Nassif,* and
Colin
Tinsley
Laboratoire de Microbiologie, INSERM U411,
Faculté de Médecine Necker-Enfants Malades, 75015 Paris, France
Received 7 May 1999/Returned for modification 21 June 1999/Accepted 26 July 1999
Neisseria meningitidis and Neisseria
gonorrhoeae give rise to dramatically different diseases. Their
interactions with the host, however, do share common characteristics:
they are both human pathogens which do not survive in the environment
and which colonize and invade mucosa at their port of entry. It is
therefore likely that they have common properties that might not be
found in nonpathogenic bacteria belonging to the same genetically
related group, such as Neisseria lactamica. Their common
properties may be determined by chromosomal regions found only in
the pathogenic Neisseria species. To address this issue, we
used a previously described technique (C. R. Tinsley and X. Nassif, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93:11109-11114, 1996) to identify
sequences of DNA specific for pathogenic neisseriae and not found in
N. lactamica. Sequences present in N. lactamica
were physically subtracted from the N. meningitidis Z2491
sequence and also from the N. gonorrhoeae FA1090
sequence. The clones obtained from each subtraction were tested by
Southern blotting for their reactivity with the three species, and only
those which reacted with both N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae (i.e., not specific to either one of
the pathogens) were further investigated. In a first step, these clones
were mapped onto the chromosomes of both N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae. The majority of the
clones were arranged in clusters extending up to 10 kb,
suggesting the presence of chromosomal regions common to N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae which distinguish
these pathogens from the commensal N. lactamica. The
sequences surrounding these clones were determined from the N. meningitidis genome-sequencing project. Several clones
corresponded to previously described factors required for colonization
and survival at the port of entry, such as immunoglobulin A protease
and PilC. Others were homologous to virulence-associated proteins in
other bacteria, demonstrating that the subtractive clones are
capable of pinpointing chromosomal regions shared by N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae which are involved in common aspects of the host interaction of both pathogens.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: INSERM U411, 156 Rue de Vaugirard, 75015 Paris, France. Phone: 33 140615678. Fax: 33 140615592. E-mail: nassif{at}necker.fr.
Infection and Immunity, November 1999, p. 6119-6129, Vol. 67, No. 11
0019-9567/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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