Comparative genomic fingerprinting for the subtyping of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli biotypes

Abstract

Introduction/Objective Thermophilic campylobacters, especially Campylobacter jejuni (C. jejuni) and Campylobacter coli (C. coli), are the most important causes of bacterial diarrhea in developed and developing countries. The disease can occur as a sporadic infection or as large and small outbreaks. Phenotyping and genotyping methods are in use to determine similarities between strains as well their possible common origin. The goal of the study was to compare discriminatory power of biotyping tests and comparative genomic fingerprinting (CGF) 40 (100%), as well as a combination of the two tests in detection of clonality or epidemiological relatedness between the studied strains.

Methods We investigated 23 Campylobacter strains using biotyping and CGF typing.

Results We found that biotyping was a more discriminatory method for C. coli, and CGF for C. jejuni strains. In the discrimination of C. jejuni strains, CGF had better discriminatory power [Simpson’s index of diversity (ID) was 0.879] over the discrimination of C. coli strains (Simpson’s ID was 0.389).

Conclusion Biotyping and CGF can be complementary methods in detection of similarity, relatedness and possible common origin between strains since the combination of biotyping and CGF methods gives more precise data about diversity within C. coli and C. jejuni strains.

Keywords: biotyping; molecular typing; multiplex PCR