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Infection and Immunity, February 2001, p. 937-948, Vol. 69, No. 2
0019-9567/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/IAI.69.2.937-948.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

afa-8 Gene Cluster Is Carried by a Pathogenicity Island Inserted into the tRNAPhe of Human and Bovine Pathogenic Escherichia coli Isolates

Lila Lalioui and Chantal Le Bouguénec*

Unité de Pathogénie Bactérienne des Muqueuses, Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France

Received 8 August 2000/Returned for modification 21 September 2000/Accepted 14 November 2000

We recently described a new afimbrial adhesin, AfaE-VIII, produced by animal strains associated with diarrhea and septicemia and by human isolates associated with extraintestinal infections. Here, we report that the afa-8 operon, encoding AfaE-VIII adhesin, from the human blood isolate Escherichia coli AL862 is carried by a 61-kb genomic region with characteristics typical of a pathogenicity island (PAI), including a size larger than 10 kb, the presence of an integrase-encoding gene, the insertion into a tRNA locus (pheR), and the presence of a small direct repeat at each extremity. Moreover, the G+C content of the afa-8 operon (46.4%) is lower than that of the E. coli K-12/MG1655 chromosome (50.8%). Within this PAI, designated PAI IAL862, we identified open reading frames able to code for products similar to proteins involved in sugar utilization. Four probes spanning these sequences hybridized with 74.3% of pathogenic afa-8-positive E. coli strains isolated from humans and animals, 25% of human pathogenic afa-8-negative E. coli strains, and only 8% of fecal strains (P = 0.05), indicating that these sequences are strongly associated with the afa-8 operon and that this genetic association may define a PAI widely distributed among human and animal afa-8-positive strains. One of the distinctive features of this study is that E. coli AL862 also carries another afa-8-containing PAI (PAI IIAL862), which appeared to be similar in size and genetic organization to PAI IAL862 and was inserted into the pheV gene. We investigated the insertion sites of afa-8-containing PAI in human and bovine pathogenic E. coli strains and found that this PAI preferentially inserted into the pheV gene.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Pathogénie Bactérienne des Muqueuses, Institut Pasteur, 28 Rue du Dr Roux, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France. Phone: 33 1 40613280. Fax: 33 1 40613640. E-mail: clb{at}pasteur.fr.

Infection and Immunity, February 2001, p. 937-948, Vol. 69, No. 2
0019-9567/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/IAI.69.2.937-948.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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Copyright © 2001 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.