MULTILOCUS SEQUENCE TYPING OF BRUCELLA ISOLATES FROM THAILAND.

Although brucellosis outbreaks in Thailand are rare, they cause abortions and infertility in animals, resulting in significant economic loss. Because Brucella spp display > 90% DNA homology, multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was employed to categorize local Brucella isolates into sequence types (STs) and to determine their genetic relatedness. Brucella samples were isolated from vaginal secretion of cows and goats, and from blood cultures of infected individuals. Brucella species were determined by multiplex PCR of eight loci, in addition to MLST based on partial DNA sequences of nine house-keeping genes. MLST analysis of 36 isolates revealed 78 distinct novel allele types and 34 novel STs, while two isolates possessed the known ST8. Sequence alignments identified polymorphic sites in each allele, ranging from 2-6%, while overall genetic diversity was 3.6%. MLST analysis of the 36 Brucella isolates classified them into three species, namely, B. melitensis, B. abortus and B. suis, in agreement with multiplex PCR results. Genetic relatedness among ST members of B. melitensis and B. abortus determined by eBURST program revealed ST2 as founder of B. abortus isolates and ST8 the founder of B. melitensis isolates. ST 36, 41 and 50 of Thai Brucella isolates were identified as single locus variants of clonal cluster (CC) 8, while the majority of STs were diverse. The genetic diversity and relatedness identified using MLST revealed hitherto unexpected diversity among Thai Brucella isolates. Genetic classification of isolates could reveal the route of brucellosis transmission among humans and farm animals and also reveal their relationship with other isolates in the region and other parts of the world.

Leptospirosis serodiagnosis by ELISA based on recombinant outer membrane protein.

The outer membrane protein LipL21, LipL32, LipL41 and Loa22 of Leptospira interrogans serovar Copenhageni were previously revealed by immunoproteomic analysis, using sera from acute phase infection in a guinea pig. The full-length DNA of each protein was then cloned from the same serovar and expressed in pRSET vector. The obtained molecular weight (MW) of recombinant proteins rLipL21, rLipL32 and rLoa22 were slightly higher than the MW predicted from nucleotide sequences of each inserted gene, while only the N-terminal half of rLipL41 was obtained. Mice antiserum raised against each purified recombinant protein could react with the whole cell lysate of leptospiral serovars, implying that leptospiral native proteins shared a common epitope with recombinant protein. Serodiagnosis using recombinant protein antigen based on indirect ELISA procedure was developed in this study. The optimization of the ELISA components lead to determination of optical density (OD) from a single serum-dilution of 1:1000 in the leptospirosis patients group and normal healthy control group. The cut off OD values for both IgG and IgM class were investigated, and based on this fixed dilution only the IgG class could be used for differential diagnosis of patients and normal individuals. Compared with the MAT assay, ELISA assay utilizing both rLipL32 and rLoa22 as antigen, gave high accuracy and could thus be useful as a confirmative serology test.