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Journal of Bacteriology, June 2009, p. 3881-3891, Vol. 191, No. 12
0021-9193/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00222-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Microarray Identification of Clostridium difficile Core Components and Divergent Regions Associated with Host Origin{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Tavan Janvilisri,1,5 Joy Scaria,1 Angela D. Thompson,2 Ainsley Nicholson,2 Brandi M. Limbago,2 Luis G. Arroyo,3 J. Glenn Songer,4 Yrjö T. Gröhn,1 and Yung-Fu Chang1*

Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853,1 Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30333,2 Department of Clinical Studies, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1,3 Department of Veterinary Science and Microbiology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721,4 Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand 104005

Received 19 February 2009/ Accepted 8 April 2009

Clostridium difficile is a gram-positive, spore-forming enteric anaerobe which can infect humans and a wide variety of animal species. Recently, the incidence and severity of human C. difficile infection has markedly increased. In this study, we evaluated the genomic content of 73 C. difficile strains isolated from humans, horses, cattle, and pigs by comparative genomic hybridization with microarrays containing coding sequences from C. difficile strains 630 and QCD-32g58. The sequenced genome of C. difficile strain 630 was used as a reference to define a candidate core genome of C. difficile and to explore correlations between host origins and genetic diversity. Approximately 16% of the genes in strain 630 were highly conserved among all strains, representing the core complement of functional genes defining C. difficile. Absent or divergent genes in the tested strains were distributed across the entire C. difficile 630 genome and across all the predicted functional categories. Interestingly, certain genes were conserved among strains from a specific host species, but divergent in isolates with other host origins. This information provides insight into the genomic changes which might contribute to host adaptation. Due to a high degree of divergence among C. difficile strains, a core gene list from this study offers the first step toward the construction of diagnostic arrays for C. difficile.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. Phone: (607) 253-2675. Fax: (607) 253-3943. E-mail: yc42{at}cornell.edu

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 17 April 2009.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jb.asm.org/.

Journal of Bacteriology, June 2009, p. 3881-3891, Vol. 191, No. 12
0021-9193/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00222-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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