Identification of cold-temperature-regulated genes in Flavobacterium psychrophilum.

Flavobacterium psychrophilum is the etiological agent of bacterial coldwater disease (BCWD) and rainbow trout fry syndrome (RTFS). It causes disease primarily in fresh water-reared salmonids, but other fish species can also be affected. A diverse array of clinical conditions is associated with BCWD, including tail rot (peduncle disease), necrotic myositis, and cephalic osteochondritis. Degradation of connective and muscular tissues by extracellular proteases is common to all of these presentations. There are no effective vaccines to prevent BCWD or RTFS, and antibiotics are often used to prevent and control disease. To identify virulence factors that might permit development of an efficacious vaccine, cDNA suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) was used to identify cold-regulated genes in a virulent strain of F. psychrophilum. Genes predicted to encode a two-component system sensor histidine kinase (LytS), an ATP-dependent RNA helicase, a multidrug ABC transporter permease/ATPase, an outer membrane protein/protective antigen OMA87, an M43 cytophagalysin zinc-dependent metalloprotease, a hypothetical protein, and four housekeeping genes were upregulated at 8°C versus the level of expression at 20°C. Because no F. psychrophilum gene was known to be suitable as an internal standard in reverse transcription-quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) experiments, the expression stability of nine commonly used reference genes was evaluated at 8°C and 20°C. Expression of the 16S rRNA was equivalent at both temperatures, and this gene was used in RT-qPCR experiments to verify the SSH findings. With the exception of the ATCC 49513 strain, similar patterns of gene expression were obtained with 11 other representative strains of F. psychrophilum.

Prevalence of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, Actinobacillus suis, Haemophilus parasuis, Pasteurella multocida, and Streptococcus suis in representative Ontario swine herds.

Tonsillar and nasal swabs were collected from weanling pigs in 50 representative Ontario swine herds and tested for the presence of 5 important bacterial upper respiratory tract pathogens. All but 1 herd (2%) tested positive for Streptococcus suis by polymerase chain reaction (PCR); 48% of herds were S. suis serovar 2, 1/2 positive. In all but 2 herds there was evidence of Haemophilus parasuis infection. In contrast, toxigenic strains of Pasteurella multocida were detected by a P. multocida--enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay (PMT-ELISA) in only one herd. Seventy-eight percent of the herds were diagnosed positive for Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae by apxIV PCR. Sera from finishing pigs on the same farms were also collected and tested by ELISA for the presence of A. pleuropneumoniae antibodies. Seventy percent of the herds tested had evidence of antibodies to A. pleuropneumoniae including serovars 1-9-11 (2%), 2 (4%), 3-6-8-15 (15%), 5 (6%), 4-7 (26%), and 12 (17%). This likely represents a shift from previous years when infection with A. pleuropneumoniae serovars 1, 5, and 7 predominated. At least 16% and possibly as many as 94% of the herds tested were Actinobacillus suis positive; only 3 of the 50 herds were both A. pleuropneumoniae and A. suis negative as judged by the absence of a positive PCR test for apxII. Taken together, these data suggest that over the past 10 years, there has been a shift in the presence of pathogenic bacteria carried by healthy Ontario swine with the virtual elimination of toxigenic strains of P. multocida and a move to less virulent A. pleuropneumoniae serovars. As well, there appears to be an increase in prevalence of S. suis serovar 2, 1/2, but this may be a reflection of the use of a more sensitive detection method.

Differential expression of Haemophilus parasuis genes in response to iron restriction and cerebrospinal fluid.

Haemophilus parasuis is an important opportunistic pathogen in swine of high health status, but to date no proven virulence factors have been described. As virulence factors are known to be regulated during disease, the objective of this study was to identify genes of a virulent serovar 5 strain with altered expression after iron restriction or in the presence of porcine cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), conditions that reflect in vivo growth conditions. Using differential-display reverse-transcriptase-mediated polymerase chain reaction, we found that homologues of genes encoding fructose bisphosphate aldolase (fba), adenylosuccinate synthetase (purA), 2',3'-cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase (cpdB), lipoprotein signal peptidase (lspA), pyrophosphate reductase (lytB), superoxide dismutase (sodC), tyrosyl t-RNA synthetase (tyrS), cysteine synthetase (cysK), an unknown protein, and a homologue of a hydrolase of the haloacid dehydrogenase superfamily were upregulated in response to iron restriction. In addition, the purA, cpdB, lspA, lytB, and sodC homologues, cDNAs homologous with a Na+/alanine symporter, fatty acid ligase (fadD), diadenosine tetraphosphatase (apaH), and an unknown protein were upregulated in response to CSF. In screening for the presence of these differentially expressed genes to assess their usefulness as diagnostic markers of high virulence potential, we detected homologues of all of these genes in all of the reference strains of the 15 established serovars. The hydrolase homologue, however, was expressed only in representative H. parasuis strains associated with a high virulence potential, suggesting that this enzyme may play a role in pathogenesis.

Binary toxin locus analysis in Clostridium difficile.

The objective of this study was to compare full binary toxin loci (CDTloc) sequences from a collection of Clostridium difficile isolates in an effort to further understand the regulation of the binary toxin (CdtAB) and its putative regulator (CdtR). Sequences from different ribotypes and toxinotypes were analysed phylogenetically and for polymorphisms, non-sense mutations, promoter features and signal sequences. Expression of cdtA, which was also representative of cdtB expression, was measured by quantitative PCR (qPCR). Several consensus promoter features and various polymorphisms were identified including a non-sense mutation identified in a ribotype 078 cdtR gene that is predicted to result in a severely truncated protein. Despite this mutation, cdtA expression was still detected by qPCR. Dendrograms based on total sequences indicated that isolates belonging to the same ribotype shared the greatest similarity within the binary toxin locus. Although cdtR is thought to be involved in regulation of cdtA expression, a cdtR non-sense mutation did not inhibit expression of cdtA, suggesting that either the truncated protein is functional or another regulator of the binary toxin exists.