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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, January 2001, p. 14-23, Vol. 39, No. 1
Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology of
Infectious Disease, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford
OX1 3FY,1 The Public Health Laboratory,
Royal Preston Hospital, Preston PR2 9HG,2
and The Public Health Laboratory, Withington Hospital,
Manchester M20 8LR,3 United Kingdom, and
Research Laboratory for Infectious Diseases, National Institute
of Public Health and the Environment, 3720 BA Bilthoven, The
Netherlands4
Received 20 June 2000/Returned for modification 4 September
2000/Accepted 16 October 2000
The gram-negative bacterium Campylobacter jejuni has
extensive reservoirs in livestock and the environment and is a frequent cause of gastroenteritis in humans. To date, the lack of (i) methods suitable for population genetic analysis and (ii) a universally accepted nomenclature has hindered studies of the epidemiology and
population biology of this organism. Here, a multilocus sequence typing
(MLST) system for this organism is described, which exploits the
genetic variation present in seven housekeeping loci to determine the
genetic relationships among isolates. The MLST system was established
using 194 C. jejuni isolates of diverse origins, from humans, animals, and the environment. The allelic profiles, or sequence
types (STs), of these isolates were deposited on the Internet
(http://mlst.zoo.ox.ac.uk), forming a virtual isolate collection which
could be continually expanded. These data indicated that C. jejuni is genetically diverse, with a weakly clonal population structure, and that intra- and interspecies horizontal genetic exchange
was common. Of the 155 STs observed, 51 (26% of the isolate collection) were unique, with the remainder of the collection being
categorized into 11 lineages or clonal complexes of related STs with
between 2 and 56 members. In some cases membership in a given lineage
or ST correlated with the possession of a particular Penner HS
serotype. Application of this approach to further isolate collections
will enable an integrated global picture of C. jejuni epidemiology to be established and will permit more detailed studies of
the population genetics of this organism.
0095-1137/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JCM.39.1.14-23.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Multilocus Sequence Typing System for
Campylobacter jejuni

*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Wellcome Trust
Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, Department of
Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Rd., Oxford OX1 3FY, United Kingdom. Phone: [44] (1865) 271284. Fax: [44] (1865) 271284. E-mail: martin.maiden{at}zoo.ox.ac.uk.
Present address: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, UCLA
School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1747.
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