Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Journal of Clinical Microbiology, November 2001, p. 3920-3926, Vol. 39, No. 11
Research Animal Diagnostic and Investigative Laboratory,
Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, University of Missouri,
Columbia, Missouri 652111; Animal Health
Diagnostic Laboratory, Laboratory Animal Sciences Program, NCI-FCRDC,
Science Applications International Corporation, Frederick,
Maryland 217012; Forsyth Institute,
Boston, Boston, Massachusetts 021153;
Veterinary and Tumor Pathology Section, Center for Cancer
Research, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland
021154; and Division of Comparative
Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts 021395
Received 3 July 2001/Returned for modification 7 August
2001/Accepted 28 August 2001
Over the past decade, several Helicobacter species have
been isolated from rodents. With the advent of PCR for the diagnosis of
infectious agents, it has become clear that several previously uncharacterized Helicobacter species also colonize rodents.
In this report, we describe a novel urease-negative helicobacter, Helicobacter typhlonius sp. nov., which was isolated from
colonies of laboratory mice independently by two laboratories.
Infection of immunodeficient mice by this bacterium resulted in
typhlocolitis similar to that observed with other helicobacter
infections. H. typhlonius is genetically most closely
related to H. hepaticus. Like H. hepaticus, it
is a spiral bacterium with bipolar sheathed flagella. However, this
novel species contains a large intervening sequence in its 16S rRNA
gene and is biochemically distinct from H. hepaticus.
Notably, H. typhlonius does not produce urease or H2S nor does it hydrolize indoxyl-acetate. Compared to
other Helicobacter species that commonly colonize rodents,
H. typhlonius was found to be less prevalent than H. hepaticus and H. rodentium but as prevalent as
H. bilis. H. typhlonius joins a growing list of
helicobacters that colonize mice and are capable of inducing enteric
disease in various strains of immunodeficient mice.
0095-1137/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JCM.39.11.3920-3926.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Helicobacter typhlonius sp. nov., a
Novel Murine Urease-Negative Helicobacter
Species
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Division of
Comparative Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bldg.
16-825C, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Phone: (617) 253-1757. Fax: (617) 258-5708. E-mail: jgfox{at}mit.edu.
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»