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Recovery of an environmental chlamydia strain from activated sludge by co-cultivation with Acanthamoeba sp.

¹ Division of Microbial Ecology, Institute for Ecology and Conservation Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstr. 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria
² Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Hygiene, Universitätsklinik Ulm, Robert-Koch-Str. 8, 89081 Ulm, Germany
³ Biological Institute, University Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany

Correspondence
Matthias Horn
horn{at}microbial-ecology.net

Chlamydiae are a unique group of obligate intracellular bacteria comprising important pathogens of vertebrates as well as symbionts of free-living amoebae. Although there is ample molecular evidence for a huge diversity and wide distribution of chlamydiae in nature, environmental chlamydiae are currently represented by only few isolates. This paper reports the recovery of a novel environmental chlamydia strain from activated sludge by co-cultivation with Acanthamoeba sp. The recovered environmental chlamydia strain UV-7 showed the characteristic morphology of chlamydial developmental stages as revealed by electron microscopy and was identified as a new member of the family Parachlamydiaceae (98·7 % 16S rRNA sequence similarity to Parachlamydia acanthamoebae). Infection studies suggested that Parachlamydia sp. UV-7 is not confined to amoeba hosts but is also able to invade mammalian cells. These findings outline a new straightforward approach to retrieving environmental chlamydiae from nature without prior, tedious isolation and cultivation of their natural host cells, and lend further support to suggested implications of environmental chlamydiae for public health.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of Parachlamydia sp. UV-7 is AJ715410.

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