Genetic diversity of Chlamydia pecorum strains in wild koala locations across Australia and the implications for a recombinant C. pecorum major outer membrane protein based vaccine

Identification of unusual Chlamydia pecorum genotypes in Victorian koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) and clinical variables associated with infection

“…C. pecorum-positive DNA was used as template for conventional PCR to amplify ompA, as described previously (Kollipara et al, 2013). PCR products of the predicted size (*1170 bp) were purified using a QIAquick PCR purification kit (Qiagen) and sequenced using BigDye Terminator version 3.1 (Life Technologies) using ompA PCR primers (Kollipara et al, 2013), and internal primers 59-AGAGCTACTTTTGATGCAGA-39 and 59-TTTGTGAACCACTCCGCATC-39.…”

“…C. pecorum-positive DNA was used as template for conventional PCR to amplify ompA, as described previously (Kollipara et al, 2013). PCR products of the predicted size (*1170 bp) were purified using a QIAquick PCR purification kit (Qiagen) and sequenced using BigDye Terminator version 3.1 (Life Technologies) using ompA PCR primers (Kollipara et al, 2013), and internal primers 59-AGAGCTACTTTTGATGCAGA-39 and 59-TTTGTGAACCACTCCGCATC-39. Geneious 7 software (Biomatters) was used for sequence analysis, and CLUSTAL W (Thompson et al, 1994) was used to align results with published ompA sequences available in GenBank and in the literature (Jackson et al, 1997).…”

“…Variation in host and environmental factors between southern and northern populations would also be expected to result in variation of disease expression (Patterson et al, 2015). Previous studies assessing the diversity of C. pecorum in Australian koala populations have focused on populations in Queensland and New South Wales (Kollipara et al, 2013). Comprehensive C. pecorum genotyping studies in Victorian koalas are currently lacking, but would be useful in understanding the observed differences in disease syndromes between koala populations.…”

“…The nucleotide sequence of ompA, which has four variable domains, has been used frequently to genotype C. pecorum samples collected from koalas, leading to the detection of 11 koala-associated genotypes, named A-K (Jackson et al, 1997;Kollipara et al, 2013). C. pecorum in livestock species such as cattle, pigs, sheep and goats have also been genotyped using ompA (Jackson et al, 1997;Mohamad et al, 2014).…”

Chlamydia pecorum: successful pathogen of koalas or Australian livestock?

“…Veterinarians from agriculturally productive areas throughout Australia regularly report cases of chlamydiosis in sheep and cattle 8,9 , but the information about the genetic diversity of strains infecting livestock is lacking. A range of previous molecular studies suggested that C. pecorum strains infecting koala are genetically diverse 10,11 ; however, none of the studies investigated how and whether these strains are related to livestock strains. It has been hypothesised that the origin of koala C. pecorum infections is associated with the import of 'presumably C. pecorum infected' livestock in the late 1780s 3 .…”