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Infection and Immunity, February 2004, p. 1199-1203, Vol. 72, No. 2
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.2.1199-1203.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Comparison of Campylobacter jejuni Isolates Implicated in Guillain-Barré Syndrome and Strains That Cause Enteritis by a DNA Microarray
Edward E. Leonard II,1,2,
Lucy S. Tompkins,1,2 Stanley Falkow,1 and Irving Nachamkin3*
Department of Microbiology and Immunology,1
Division of Infectious Diseases, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305,2
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 191043
Received 17 July 2003/
Returned for modification 16 September 2003/
Accepted 14 October 2003

ABSTRACT
We asked whether
Campylobacter jejuni isolated from patients
with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) differ from isolates
isolated from patients with uncomplicated gastrointestinal infection
using DNA microarray analysis. We found that specific GBS genes
or regions were not identified, and microarray analysis confirmed
significant genomic heterogeneity among the isolates.

INTRODUCTION
Campylobacter jejuni subsp.
jejuni (referred to as
C. jejuni hereafter) is one of the most common causes of bacterial infectious
diarrhea and is estimated to cause approximately 2.5 million
cases of infectious diarrhea per year in the United States (
5).
In most cases of
C. jejuni infection, patients develop acute
gastroenteritis and resolve the infection without complications.
There is a small subset of patients with
C. jejuni infection
who develop the postinfectious neurologic disorder, Guillian-Barré
syndrome (GBS), an acute, immune system-mediated polyneuropathy
that leads to ascending paralysis (
9,
22).
C. jejuni has been
implicated as one of the leading infectious agents associated
with this syndrome (
15).
Although not completely understood, the development of GBS after C. jejuni infection is thought to be related to molecular mimicry by anti-Campylobacter lipooligosaccharide (LOS) antibodies that cross-react with ganglioside epitopes on neural tissue (22). C. jejuni express a number of ganglioside-like moieties in the outer LOS core region, including GM1-like and GD1a-like structures, and some patients with Campylobacter-associated GBS develop antibodies to these and other ganglioside-like structures (14). The resulting antibodies are thought to target relevant epitopes in peripheral nerve tissue. causing demyelination and axonal damage (7, 8).
With the availability of the C. jejuni sequence (18), genomic and expression analyses using a C. jejuni DNA microarray have been made possible (3, 11, 20). In order to better understand the pathogenesis of C. jejuni associated with GBS, we compared a collection of isolates from patients with GBS with isolates from patients with uncomplicated gastrointestinal infection using an open reading frame (ORF)-specific C. jejuni DNA microarray. The aim of this study was to identify unique differences within the genome that were associated with GBS.
Twelve strains of C. jejuni associated with GBS were compared to 12 strains associated with uncomplicated gastrointestinal illness (Table 1). A variety of serotypes are represented in both groups of isolates. Some of the isolates were also previously characterized by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis and represent a number of different electrophoretic types (4, 16).
DNA microarray analysis was performed blindly, without knowledge
of strain designation or clinical outcome. Genomic DNA was prepared
using a Wizard Prep kit per the manufacturer's instructions
(Promega). All strains were compared to a reference strain composed
of DNA from the sequenced strain NCTC 11168 and DNA from the
virulence plasmid (pVir) isolated from strain 81-176 (
1,
2);
the pVir DNA was added to approximate one copy of plasmid per
genome. Hybridization was performed using 500 ng of chromosomal
DNA from each isolate and the reference array as previously
described (
11,
19). All strains were hybridized to the microarray
in duplicate. After the hybridizations were completed, the microarrays
were scanned using an Axon scanner and Genepix 3.0 software
(Axon Instruments, Redwood City, Calif.). The data were submitted
to the Stanford Microarray Database and retrieved using the
following filters: (i) spots with Ch1 pixels > background
level plus 1 standard deviation and (ii) values of failed spots
are set at 0. The microarray replicates were shown to be reproducible
by correlation coefficients and averaged after the data was
analyzed and transformed into binary format using a program
called Genomotyping Analysis (GACK) (
10) (
http://cmgm.stanford.edu/falkow/whatwedo/software/software.html).
This program calculates an idealized normal distribution curve
for each array and assigns a binary value to each data point
on the microarray, depending on an estimated probability of
a gene being present or absent in a given strain relative to
the same probability in reference strain 11168. We designated
genes that had an equal probability of being present or absent
as present in the analysis. Gene identification used the annotated
C. jejuni genome available on the Sanger Centre website (
http://www.Sanger.ac.uk/Projects/C_jejuni).
The microarray data were subjected to hierarchical clustering
between arrays with the CLUSTER program, and the results were
presented using the TREEVIEW program (
19).
Microarray analysis did not identify discrete groups of isolates or any unique features within the genome of the C. jejuni isolates associated with GBS. Cluster analysis of the groups of isolates with the same serotype was also performed and failed to segregate isolates associated with GBS from isolates associated with gastroenteritis (Fig. 1). The pVir plasmid was not detected in any of the strains studied. However, pVir has been reported to contain several chromosomal homologues, such as fliH and a gene with unknown function that could account for conserved regions within the pVir section of the array (2). Our results suggest that the differences, if any, between strains of C. jejuni that were associated with GBS versus those associated only with enteritis were not at the level of the genome. However, we cannot determine from this study whether the lack of hybridization in various regions represents the absence of a particular gene or nucleotide divergence within an existing gene. Additionally, differences due to the presence of genetic elements in either the GBS- or enteritis-related isolates would not necessarily be detected because of the absence of such elements in the genome of the strain used to construct the microarray.
The divergent regions within the
C. jejuni genome involve well-defined
regions (Fig.
2). Compared with strain 11168, GBS- and enteritis-associated
strains had 91.4 and 90.9% ORFs in common, respectively. Compared
with enteritis-associated strains, GBS-associated isolates had
89% ORFs in common. Approximately 11% of the ORFs contained
in strain 11168 were absent in the GBS- and enteritis-associated
strains. Many of the genes that were divergent or absent in
the GBS- and enteritis-associated strains were in the same region,
regardless of how the strains were compared. These regions of
the genome include genes involved in production of the capsule,
flagella, and LOS. In addition, there were areas of heterogeneity
in the
uxaA locus involved with sugar transport and metabolism
of hexuronates leading to the formation of
D-2-keto-3-deoxy-
D-gluconate
and is part of the
exu regulon (
12). There were other less-defined
areas of heterogeneity in some strains compared to the genome
sequence that were mostly ORFs without an identified function
thus far. Variation in type I modification and restriction genes
were also observed among the isolates. While the reasons for
this variation are unknown, such variation has been observed
by our group (Erin Gaynor, personal communication) and we can
only speculate that since
C. jejuni is naturally transformable,
it may have evolved multiple mechanisms to avoid incorporating
foreign DNA. Taken together, these results suggest that many
C. jejuni strains undergo extensive surface protein modification.
These results are similar to findings obtained from microarray
analyses of a series of unrelated strains, as well as in bacteria
that were epidemiologically linked (
3,
11).
A comparison of
C. jejuni strains associated with GBS has not
previously been studied by DNA microarray analysis. We are also
not aware of studies using subtractive hybridization between
GBS- and enteritis-related isolates that could reveal additional
differences not detected with the microarray approach in the
present study. Certain serotypes of
C. jejuni are known to be
overrepresented in cases of campylobacter-induced GBS, such
as HS:19 and HS:41, suggesting that strains expressing these
serotypes might contain specific virulence factors relevant
to GBS (
15). Previous molecular typing studies have not, however,
identified unique features of GBS-associated strains (
6), although
the sialyltransferase gene,
cstII, has been identified as being
overrepresented in GBS-related strains of
C. jejuni (
16,
17,
21). On the other hand, there is evidence from a recent study
that
C. jejuni isolates associated with GBS preferentially express
GD
1a-like structures, regardless of the bacterial serotype (
17).
Possibly, posttranslational modification of the surface structures
might account for the discordant results, suggesting that GBS-associated
strains might encode regulatory or modification loci that were
not detected by microarray analysis. Such modifications might
be an important mechanism in the development of molecular mimicry.
Alternatively, differential expression of
Campylobacter virulence
factors might be operative and would be disclosed by expression
analysis. Host susceptibility is likely an important factor
in the development of GBS (
13), and further characterization
of the interaction between the host and
C. jejuni is needed
to better understand the pathogenesis of
Campylobacter-induced
GBS.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Huong Ung for technical assistance. We also thank Erin
Gaynor for helpful discussions.
This work was supported in part by the Howard Hughes Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for Physicians and the Minority Medical Faculty Development Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (E.E.L.), Stanford University Digestive Disease Center (grant DK56339) (S.F. and L.S.T.), and the National Institutes of Health (grant NS-31528) (I.N.).

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Gates Building, 4th Floor, 3400 Spruce St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-4283. Phone: (215) 662-6651. Fax: (215) 662-6655. E-mail:
nachamki{at}mail.med.upenn.edu.

Editor: V. J. DiRita
Present address: Infectious Disease Group, Bellevue, WA 98004. 

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Infection and Immunity, February 2004, p. 1199-1203, Vol. 72, No. 2
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.2.1199-1203.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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