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Research Paper |
Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology, University of Würzburg, Josef-Schneider-Straße 2, 97080 Würzburg, Germany1
The Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3SY, UK2
Author for correspondence: Ulrich Vogel. Tel: +49 931 20146802. Fax: +49 931 20146445. e-mail: uvogel{at}hygiene.uni-wuerzburg.de
Of 830 Neisseria meningitidis isolates obtained from healthy carriers in Bavaria, Germany, 136 (16·4%) lacked the operons necessary for the synthesis, lipid modification, and transport of capsular polysaccharide. These operons were replaced by a non-coding intergenic region either 113 or 114 bp in length, termed here the capsule null locus (cnl). Comparisons of the nucleotide sequence of this region in the meningococcus and its acapsulate relatives, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Neisseria lactamica, revealed six distinct sequence variants (cnl-1 to cnl-6), with a total of 10 nucleotide substitutions and three indels. With the exception of one 4 bp insertion, which was unique to a gonococcal isolate, all of the individual sequence changes were present in the N. lactamica isolates examined. The meningococcal isolates with a cnl belonged to one of four otherwise genetically diverse genetic groupings: the ST-53 and ST-1117 complexes (75 isolates); the ST-845 complex (12 isolates); the ST-198 and 1136 complexes (46 isolates), and the ST-44 complex (one isolate). These data demonstrated that a substantial proportion of carried meningococci were incapable of capsule production, that the cnl circulated within Neisseria populations by horizontal genetic exchange, and that the expression of a polysaccharide capsule was not a requirement for person-to-person transmission of certain meningococcal lineages.
Keywords: Neisseria meningitidis, multilocus sequence typing, transmission, capsule null locus
Abbreviations: MLST, multilocus sequence typing; RM, restriction–modification; ST, sequence type
The GenBank accession number for the sequence of the cnl-1 allele is AJ308327.
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