This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Supplemental material
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowReprints and Permissions
Right arrow Copyright Information
Right arrow Books from ASM Press
Right arrow MicrobeWorld
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Buboltz, A. M.
Right arrow Articles by Harvill, E. T.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Buboltz, A. M.
Right arrow Articles by Harvill, E. T.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Infection and Immunity, August 2009, p. 3249-3257, Vol. 77, No. 8
0019-9567/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/IAI.01448-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Evidence for Horizontal Gene Transfer of Two Antigenically Distinct O Antigens in Bordetella bronchiseptica{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Anne M. Buboltz,1,2 Tracy L. Nicholson,3 Alexia T. Karanikas,1,4 Andrew Preston,5 and Eric T. Harvill1*

Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, the Pennsylvania State University, 115 Henning Building, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802,1 Graduate Program in Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology, the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802,2 Respiratory Diseases of Livestock Research Unit, National Animal Disease Center, Agricultural Research Service, USDA, Ames, Iowa,3 Graduate Program in Cell and Developmental Biology, the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802,4 Department of Clinical Veterinary Science, University of Bristol, Langford, United Kingdom5

Received 17 November 2008/ Returned for modification 17 February 2009/ Accepted 3 June 2009

Host immunity is a major driving force of antigenic diversity, resulting in pathogens that can evade immunity induced by closely related strains. Here we show that two Bordetella bronchiseptica strains, RB50 and 1289, express two antigenically distinct O-antigen serotypes (O1 and O2, respectively). When 18 additional B. bronchiseptica strains were serotyped, all were found to express either the O1 or O2 serotype. Comparative genomic hybridization and PCR screening showed that the expression of either the O1 or O2 serotype correlated with the strain containing either the classical or alternative O-antigen locus, respectively. Multilocus sequence typing analysis of 49 B. bronchiseptica strains was used to build a phylogenetic tree, which revealed that the two O-antigen loci did not associate with a particular lineage, evidence that these loci are horizontally transferred between B. bronchiseptica strains. From experiments using mice vaccinated with purified lipopolysaccharide from strain RB50 (O1), 1289 (O2), or RB50{Delta}wbm (O antigen deficient), our data indicate that these O antigens do not confer cross-protection in vivo. The lack of cross-immunity between O-antigen serotypes appears to contribute to inefficient antibody-mediated clearance between strains. Together, these data are consistent with the idea that the O-antigen loci of B. bronchiseptica are horizontally transferred between strains and encode antigenically distinct serotypes, resulting in inefficient cross-immunity.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, 115 Henning Building, University Park, PA 16802. Phone: (814) 863-8522. Fax: (814) 863-6140. E-mail: harvill{at}psu.edu

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 15 June 2009.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://iai.asm.org/.

Editor: R. P. Morrison

Infection and Immunity, August 2009, p. 3249-3257, Vol. 77, No. 8
0019-9567/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/IAI.01448-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology.   For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»