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Infection and Immunity, May 2001, p. 2894-2901, Vol. 69, No. 5
Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, College
of Medicine, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
778431; Department of Microbiology and
Immunology, University of Tennessee, Memphis, Tennessee
381632; Chemical and Life Sciences
Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois
618014; and The Sanger Centre, The
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hixton,
Cambridge,3 and Department of
Biochemistry, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ,5
United Kingdom
Received 1 December 2000/Accepted 29 January 2001
Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi differs from
nontyphoidal Salmonella serotypes by its strict host
adaptation to humans and higher primates. Since fimbriae have been
implicated in host adaptation, we investigated whether the serotype
Typhi genome contains fimbrial operons which are unique to this
pathogen or restricted to typhoidal Salmonella serotypes.
This study established for the first time the total number of fimbrial
operons present in an individual Salmonella serotype. The
serotype Typhi CT18 genome, which has been sequenced by the Typhi
Sequencing Group at the Sanger Centre, contained a type IV fimbrial
operon, an orthologue of the agf operon, and 12 putative
fimbrial operons of the chaperone-usher assembly class. In addition to
sef, fim, saf, and tcf, which had been
described previously in serotype Typhi, we identified eight new
putative chaperone-usher-dependent fimbrial operons, which were termed
bcf, sta, stb, ste, std, stc, stg, and sth.
Hybridization analysis performed with 16 strains of
Salmonella reference collection C and 22 strains of
Salmonella reference collection B showed that all eight
putative fimbrial operons of serotype Typhi were also present in a
number of nontyphoidal Salmonella serotypes. Thus, a simple
correlation between host range and the presence of a single fimbrial
operon seems at present unlikely. However, the serotype Typhi genome
differed from that of all other Salmonella serotypes
investigated in that it contained a unique combination of putative
fimbrial operons.
0019-9567/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.69.5.2894-2901.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhi Possesses a Unique
Repertoire of Fimbrial Gene Sequences
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Medical Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, Texas A&M
University System Health Science Center, 407 Reynolds Medical Building,
College Station, TX 77843-1114. Phone: (979) 862-7756. Fax: (979)
845-3479. E-mail: abaumler{at}tamu.edu.
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