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Infection and Immunity, April 2001, p. 2083-2091, Vol. 69, No. 4
0019-9567/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.69.4.2083-2091.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Analysis of Transcriptionally Active Gene Clusters of Major
Outer Membrane Protein Multigene Family in Ehrlichia
canis and E. chaffeensis
Norio
Ohashi,
Yasuko
Rikihisa,* and
Ahmet
Unver
Department of Veterinary Biosciences, College
of Veterinary Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
43210-1093
Received 27 October 2000/Returned for modification 8 December
2000/Accepted 4 January 2001
Ehrlichia canis and E. chaffeensis are
tick-borne obligatory intramonocytic ehrlichiae that cause febrile
systemic illness in humans and dogs, respectively. The current study
analyzed the pleomorphic multigene family encoding approximately
30-kDa major outer membrane proteins (OMPs) of E. canis and
E. chaffeensis. Upstream from secA and
downstream of hypothetical transcriptional regulator, 22 paralogs of
the omp gene family were found to be tandemly arranged
except for one or two genes with opposite orientations in a 28- and a
27-kb locus in the E. canis and E. chaffeensis genomes, respectively. Each locus consisted of three highly repetitive regions with four nonrepetitive intervening regions. E. canis, in addition, had a 6.9-kb locus which contained a repeat
of three tandem paralogs in the 28-kb locus. These total 47 paralogous and orthologous genes encoded OMPs of approximately 30 to 35 kDa consisting of several hypervariable regions alternating with conserved regions. In the 5'-end half of the 27-kb locus or the 28-kb locus of
each Ehrlichia species, 14 paralogs were linked by short
intergenic spaces ranging from
8 bp (overlapped) to 27 bp, and 8 remaining paralogs in the 3'-end half were connected by longer
intergenic spaces ranging from 213 to 632 bp. All 22 paralogs, five
unknown genes, and secA in the omp cluster in
E. canis were transcriptionally active in the monocyte
culture, and the paralogs with short intergenic spaces were
cotranscribed with their adjacent genes, including the respective
intergenic spaces at both the 5' and the 3' sides. Although
omp genes are diverse, our results suggest that the gene organization of the clusters and the gene locus are conserved between
two species of Ehrlichia to maintain a unique
transcriptional mechanism for adaptation to environmental changes
common to them.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Veterinary Biosciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, The Ohio State University, 1925 Coffey Rd., Columbus, OH 43210-1093. Phone: (614) 292-9677. Fax: (614) 292-6473. E-mail: rikihisa{at}osu.edu.
Infection and Immunity, April 2001, p. 2083-2091, Vol. 69, No. 4
0019-9567/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.69.4.2083-2091.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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