Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Journal of Clinical Microbiology, August 2001, p. 2768-2778, Vol. 39, No. 8
Unité des Rickettsies, CNRS-UPRES-A
6020, Faculté de Médecine de Marseille, 13385 Marseille
Cedex, France
Received 11 December 2000/Returned for modification 27 March
2001/Accepted 9 May 2001
Species of the genus Bartonella are currently
recognized in growing numbers and are involved in an increasing variety
of human diseases, mainly trench fever, Carrion's disease, bacillary
angiomatosis, endocarditis, cat scratch disease, neuroretinitis, and
asymptomatic bacteremia. Such a wide spectrum of infections makes it
necessary to develop species and strain identification tools in order
to perform phylogenetic and epidemiological studies. The 16S/23S rRNA
intergenic spacer region (ITS) was sequenced for four previously untested species, B. vinsonii subsp. arupensis, B. tribocorum, B. alsatica, and B. koehlerae, as well as
for 28 human isolates of B. quintana (most of them from
French homeless people), six human or cat isolates of B. henselae, five cat isolates of B. clarridgeiae, and
four human isolates of B. bacilliformis. Phylogenetic trees
inferred from full ITS sequences of the 14 recognized
Bartonella species using parsimony and distance methods
revealed high statistical support, as bootstrap values were higher than
those observed with other tested genes. Five well-supported lineages
were identified within the genus and the proposed phylogenetic
organization was consistent with that resulting from protein-encoding
gene sequence comparisons. The ITS-derived phylogeny appears,
therefore, to be a useful tool for investigating the evolutionary
relationships of Bartonella species and to identify
Bartonella species. Further, partial ITS
amplification and sequencing offers a sensitive means of intraspecies
differentiation of B. henselae, B. clarridgeiae, and
B. bacilliformis isolates, as each strain had a specific
sequence. The usefulness of this approach in epidemiological
investigations should be highlighted. Among B. quintana
strains, however, the genetic heterogenity was low, as only three
ITS genotypes were identified. It was nevertheless
sufficient to show that the B. quintana population
infecting homeless people in France was not clonal.
0095-1137/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JCM.39.8.2768-2778.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
16S/23S rRNA Intergenic Spacer Regions for Phylogenetic
Analysis, Identification, and Subtyping of
Bartonella Species
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Unité des
Rickettsies, Faculté de Médecine, 27 boulevard Jean Moulin,
13006 Marseille, France. Phone: 33 4 91 38 55 17. Fax: 33 4 91 38 77 72. E-mail: Didier.Raoult{at}medecine.univ-mrs.fr.
This article has been cited by other articles:
Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology. For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»