Chlamydia trachomatis is one of the most common bacterial pathogens and is the etiological agent of debilitating sexually transmitted and ocular diseases in humans. The organism is an obligate intracellular prokaryote characterized by a highly specialized biphasic developmental cycle. We have performed genomic transcriptional analysis of the chlamydial developmental cycle. This approach has led to the identification of a small subset of genes that control the primary (immediate-early genes) and secondary (late genes) differentiation stages of the cycle. Immediate-early gene products initiate bacterial metabolism and potentially modify the bacterial phagosome to escape fusion with lysosomes. One immediate early gene (CT147) is a homolog of the human early endosomal antigen-1 that is localized to the chlamydial phagosome; suggesting a functional role for CT147 in establishing the parasitophorous vacuole in a nonfusogenic pathway. Late gene products terminate bacterial cell division and constitute structural components and remodeling activities involved in the formation of the highly disulfide cross-linked outer-membrane complex that functions in attachment and invasion of new host cells. Many of the genes expressed during the immediate-early and late differentiation stages are Chlamydia-specific and have evolutionary origins in eukaryotic lineages.T he Chlamydia trachomatis bacterium is an obligate intracellular pathogen of humans that primarily infects columnar epithelial cells of the ocular and genital mucosae. Chlamydial infections of the eye and genital tract have a significant impact on human health worldwide, causing trachoma, the leading cause of preventable blindness, and sexually transmitted diseases (STD) that include pelvic inflammatory disease and tubal factor infertility (1, 2). Chlamydial STDs are also risk factors in cervical squamous cell carcinoma (3) and HIV infection (4, 5).C. trachomatis has a small genome of Ϸ1 Mb encoding 893 chromosomal and 8 plasmid ORFs that share significant homology in both gene structure and order among strains that infect human and animal hosts (6, 7). Two distinguishing characteristics of this pathogen are its developmental cycle and predilection for causing persistent infections (8). The developmental cycle consists of infectious and noninfectious stages that exhibit unique morphological, biochemical, and biological properties. The infectious elementary body (EB) is a metabolically inactive particle with a rigid, disulfide cross-linked outer membrane (OM) (9-12) that enables the EB to attach to and enter host cells (13-15). After host cell entry, the EB is localized to a phagosome, and the primary differentiation process is initiated. This developmental process involves the commencement of bacterial metabolism and the conversion of the EB to the intracellular replicating form of the organism, termed the reticulate body (RB).At the very early stage of infection (1-3 h) the parasite exerts profound effects on the host. Through an unknown mechanism, dependent on both ba...

Intracellular parasitism by bacterial pathogens is a complex, multi-factorial process that has been exploited successfully by a wide variety of organisms. Members of the Order Chlamydiales are obligate intracellular bacteria that are transmitted as metabolically inactive particles and must differentiate, replicate, and re-differentiate within the host cell to carry out their life cycle. Understanding the developmental cycle has been greatly advanced by the availability of complete genome sequences, DNA microarrays, and advanced cell biology techniques. Measuring transcriptional changes throughout the cycle has allowed investigators to determine the nature of the temporal gene expression changes required for bacterial growth and development.

No abstract

Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligatory intracellular prokaryotic parasite that causes a spectrum of clinically important chronic inflammatory diseases of humans. Persistent infection may play a role in the pathophysiology of chlamydial disease. Here we describe the chlamydial transcriptome in an in vitro model of IFN-␥-mediated persistence and reactivation from persistence. Tryptophan utilization, DNA repair and recombination, phospholipid utilization, protein translation, and general stress genes were up-regulated during persistence. Down-regulated genes included chlamydial late genes and genes involved in proteolysis, peptide transport, and cell division. Persistence was characterized by altered but active biosynthetic processes and continued replication of the chromosome. On removal of IFN-␥, chlamydiae rapidly reentered the normal developmental cycle and reversed transcriptional changes associated with cytokine treatment. The coordinated transcriptional response to IFN-␥ implies that a chlamydial response stimulon has evolved to control the transition between acute and persistent growth of the pathogen. In contrast to the paradigm of persistence as a general stress response, our findings suggest that persistence is an alternative life cycle used by chlamydiae to avoid the host immune response. microarray analysis ͉ chlamydia ͉ genomics ͉ latency ͉ stimulon