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Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, September 2002, p. 1132-1136, Vol. 9, No. 5
1071-412X/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/CDLI.9.5.1132-1136.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Determination of the Nucleotide Sequences of Heat Shock Operon groESL and the Citrate Synthase Gene (gltA) of Anaplasma (Ehrlichia) platys for Phylogenetic and Diagnostic Studies
Hisashi Inokuma,1* Kaori Fujii,1 Masaru Okuda,1 Takafumi Onishi,1 Jean-Pierre Beaufils,2 Didier Raoult,3 and Philippe Brouqui3
Laboratory of Veterinary Internal Medicine, Faculty of Agriculture, Yamaguchi University, 753-8515 Yamaguchi, Japan,1
Clinique Vétérinaire, route de Salinelles, 30250 Somieres,2
Unité des Rickettsies, Faculté de Médecine, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille Cédex 5, France3
Received 29 January 2002/
Returned for modification 8 May 2002/
Accepted 3 June 2002

ABSTRACT
The 1,670-bp nucleotide sequence of the heat shock operon
groESL and the 1,236-bp sequence of the citrate synthase gene (
gltA)
of
Anaplasma (
Ehrlichia)
platys were determined. The topology
of the
groEL- and
gltA-based phylogenetic tree was similar to
that derived from 16S rRNA gene analyses with distances. Both
groESL- and
gltA-based PCRs specific to
A. platys were also
developed based upon the alignment data.

TEXT
Anaplasma (
Ehrlichia)
platys is a bacterial parasite of dog
platelets that causes infectious cyclic thrombocytopenia (
8).
A. platys has been shown to be closely related to
Anaplasma marginale,
Anaplasma centrale, and
Anaplasma phagocytophila, including the former human granulocytic ehrlichia (HGE) agents
Ehrlichia equi and
Ehrlichia phagocytophila, based on 16S rRNA
gene sequences (
7); however, little information is available
regarding the natural history of the pathogen. The 16S rRNA
gene had been the only known gene sequence of
A. platys before
the heat shock protein gene (
groEL) was sequenced recently (
21).
A
groEL sequence analysis supported the phylogenetic relationship
between
A. platys and related species. The
groESL operon contains
a spacer region between
groES and
groEL which is thought to
be more divergent than the coding regions (
18,
19). However,
the nucleotide sequence of the spacer region of
A. platys has
not been studied yet. Thus, the nucleotide sequences of
groES and the spacer region between
groES and
groEL were analyzed
for additional phylogenetic characterization of
A. platys. More
recently, we sequenced the citrate synthase gene (
gltA) of 13
species, including
Ehrlichia,
Anaplasma, and
Neorickettsia,
for phylogenetic analyses and found higher variation than for
the 16S rRNA gene (
10). The topology of the
gltA-based phylogenetic
tree confirmed the reorganization of genera in the families
Rickettsiaceae and
Anaplsmataceae reported recently (
7). However,
the
gltA sequence of
A. platys has yet to be determined. Thus,
the nucleotide sequences of
A. platys gltA were also analyzed
to support the phylogenetic relationship of
A. platys among
related species. We also propose to use sequence data from
groESL and
gltA with greater differences among species to develop an
A. platys-specific PCR method. New PCR primers to specifically
detect
A. platys fragments were developed based on the alignment
data of these two genes for a diagnostic assay.
The A. platys DNA analyzed in this study was supplied from a dog infected in Somieres, France (2). The dog had a history of a clotting disorder. At the time of bleeding, the platelet count was 256,000/µl, which was in the normal range, and A. platys was observed within 58% of platelets on a Giemsa-stained peripheral blood smear. To evaluate the species-specific PCR designed in this study, DNA from other strains of A. platys were used. DNA from a dog infected with A. platys in Venezuela was kindly provided by E. B. Breitschwerdt, North Carolina State University (17). DNA from a dog infected with A. platys in Okinawa, Japan, was also used (9).
For amplification of the groESL operon of A. platys, EEgro1F and EEgro2R were used to amplify an approximately 1,700-bp fragment with an annealing temperature of 55°C (3) (Table 1). The amplification products were purified using the QIAquick PCR purification kit (Qiagen GmbH, Hilden, Germany) and sequenced. Five primers shown in Table 1 were used to complete the sequence of groESL. Fluorescence-labeled dideoxynucleotide technology was used for DNA sequencing reactions (Perkin-Elmer, Applied Biosystems Division, Foster City, Calif.). Samples were then sequenced using a Perkin-Elmer ABI Prism 377 automated DNA sequencer at the DNA Core Facility of the Center for Gene Research, Yamaguchi University.
The strategy for determining the
gltA sequence was similar to
that used in our previous report (
10). A partial sequence of
A. platys gltA was first determined using two sets of degenerate
primers, F1b and EHR-778R, and F1b and HG1085R (
10,
15) (Table
1). These primers were designed based upon the sequence of
gltA of
A. phagocytophila,
A. marginale, and
A. centrale. The amplification
conditions were the same as in the previous study (
10), with
an annealing temperature of 53°C. The amplification products
were purified and sequenced as described above. After a partial
determination of the sequence, the unknown areas of the 3' and
5' ends of the gene were determined using the Universal Genome
Walker kit (Clontech Laboratories, Palo Alto, Calif.). Briefly,
genomic DNA was digested with
EcoRV,
DraI,
PvuII,
StuI, and
ScaI. DNA fragments were ligated with a Genome Walker adaptor,
which had one blunt end and one end with a 5' overhang. A ligation
mixture of the adaptor and ehrlichial genomic DNA fragments
was used as a template for PCR. This PCR was performed using
an adaptor primer supplied by the manufacturer and
A. platys gltA-specific primers to walk downstream on the DNA sequence
(Table
1). For the amplification, the conditions were as in
our previous report (
10).
The sequences of A. platys and the registered sequences of other related species deposited in GenBank were analyzed for phylogenetic relationships. Multiple alignment analysis, the calculation of distance matrices, and the construction of phylogenetic trees were performed with the ClustalW program (20) version 1.8 in the DNA Data Bank of Japan (Mishima, Japan; http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/htmls/E-mail/clustalw-e.html). The distance matrices for the aligned sequences with all gaps ignored were calculated using the Kimura two-parameter method (11), and the neighbor-joining method was used for constructing a phylogenetic tree (16). The stability of the tree obtained was estimated by bootstrap analysis for 100 replications using the same program. Tree figures were generated using the TreeView program, version 1.61 (14).
A primer set, forward primer PLA-HS475F and reverse primer PLA-HS1198R, was designed based upon the alignment data to specifically amplify an A. platys groESL fragment. Another set of primers, PLA-CSM136F and PLA-CS1359R, was also designed based upon the alignment data of gltA. PCR conditions were the same as described above but with an annealing temperature of 58°C and the use of 40 cycles. The specificity of the reaction was tested with DNA extracted from the three strains of A. platys and related species, including A. phagocytophila (formerly the HGE strain Webster) (J. S. Dumler), E. equi strain California (J. E. Madigan), E. phagocytophila strain 1602 (A. Garcia-Perez), A. marginale strain Florida (G. H. Palmer), E. canis strain Oklahoma (J. Dawson), Wolbachia pipientis (M. Taylor), and Neorickettsia helminthoeca (Y. Rikihisa). The sensitivities of both PCR systems were also examined using DNA from A. platys strain France. The DNA was diluted 10-fold from 1:1 to 1:10,000 with distilled water.
A 1,670-bp groESL fragment of A. platys was determined to contain 41 bp of the partial groES, 51 bp of the spacer region, and 1,577 bp of the groEL coding region. The groESL operon was compared with that of other Anaplasma and Ehrlichia bacteria reported previously and was found to be closely related to the operon of A. phagocytophila and A. marginale, with 81.4 and 78.8% identity, respectively. The level of similarity among groESL sequences was much lower than that for the 16S rRNA gene sequence in the same species (98.6% with A. phagocytophila and 96.1% with A. marginale). The spacer length of 51 nucleotides was similar to that for related Anaplasma species: 52 bp for A. phagocytophila and 47 bp for A. marginale. The percent identities of the nucleotide sequence in the spacer region of A. platys compared to that of A. phagocytophila and to that of A. marginale were 74.5 and 72.3%, respectively, revealing a greater degree of divergence than for the entire groEL coding region.
After the initial identification of the 955-bp partial sequence of A. platys gltA using the degenerate PCR strategy, the full-length open reading frame extending from the ATG start codon to the TAA stop codon was determined using the Genome Walker PCR method. The length of the gltA open reading frame was 1,236 bp and encoded a protein of 411 amino acids. The complete gltA sequence was compared with that of other Anaplasma and Ehrlichia bacteria reported previously (10) and found to be closely related to those of A. phagocytophila and A. marginale, with 62.7 and 63.2% identity, respectively. The level of similarity among ehrlichial gltA was much lower than that for the 16S rRNA gene sequence in the same species. Thus, the sequence of gltA is much more variable among these species than is groESL. The length of the gltA sequence of A. platys (1,236 bp) is the same as that of A. phagocytophila but slightly shorter than that of A. marginale and A. centrale (1,254 bp).
In topology, the gltA-based phylogenetic tree (Fig. 1a) was very similar to the tree derived from analysis of the 16S rRNA gene analyses (3) and the groEL-based tree reported previously (21). However, the trees constructed from gltA and groESL nucleotide sequences showed more distance than the 16S rRNA-based trees. These findings also support the use of gltA-based and groESL-based comparisons in determining the phylogeny of Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, and Neorickettsia agents and strengthen the 16S rRNA- and groESL-based phylogeny reported recently (7). There have been reports of A. platys-like organisms identified based on 16S rRNA analysis, including bacteria from white-tailed deer in North America (6) and from a cow in South Africa (7). It would be interest to determine the phylogenetic position of these agents by analyzing the gltA and groESL gene sequences.
PCR is a powerful tool for epidemiological or diagnostic purposes
because of its high sensitivity and specificity; however, there
are few molecular tools available for
A. platys. All PCR assays
reported previously were developed based upon 16S rRNA gene
sequences (
4,
5,
9,
12,
13). In the present study, new PCR primers
were designed to amplify
A. platys DNA specifically and were
based upon the alignment data of
groESL and
gltA of
A. platys and closely related
Anaplasma and
Ehrlichia species. The PCR
produced a fragment of 724 bp from
groESL and 1,459 bp from
gltA with the DNA from
A. platys strain France (Fig.
2). The
sensitivities of the PCR systems were examined by using diluted
DNA. Both
groESL- and
gltA-based PCRs detected DNA diluted 1:100
(Fig.
2), similar to the 16S rRNA-based method (
9). As 5 µl
of the original DNA solution contained genomic DNA from approximately
375 platelets infected with
A. platys, both PCR systems can
detect DNA from 3.75 infected platelets in a reaction mixture.
The specificity of both systems was also examined using DNA
of three
A. platys strains from different geographic locations,
France, Japan, and Venezuela, and using DNA from related species,
including
A. phagocytophila and
A. marginale. Figure
3 shows
that both PCR systems were specific for
A. platys. Furthermore,
the
gltA-based PCR amplifies the whole
gltA sequence of
A. platys,
which contains both start and stop codons. As the sequences
of
gltA and
groESL have greater variation than the sequence
of 16S rRNA, the sequence analysis of PCR products may supply
useful information for phylogenic studies of the agents. Our
findings suggest that both
groESL- and
gltA-based PCRs are useful
for the specific detection of
A. platys DNA, and they would
be additional molecular tools for both phylogenetic study and
diagnosis in veterinary medicine.
Nucleotide sequence accession numbers.
The nucleotide sequences of
groESL and
gltA of
A. platys strain
France determined herein have been deposited in the GenBank
database under the accession numbers
AY044161 and
AB058782,
respectively.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We acknowledge the technical expertise of the DNA Core Facility
of the Center for Gene Research, Yamaguchi University, which
is supported by a grant-in-aid from the Ministry of Education,
Science, Sports and Culture of Japan. This work was supported
in part by a grant for an international joint research project
from Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale
in France and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
and a grant-in-aid for scientific research from the Japan Society
for the Promotion of Science (grant no. 14360190).
We also thank E. B. Breitschwerdt for the A. platys DNA from a dog in Venezuela and J. S. Dumler for scientific suggestions and English correction.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Laboratory of Veterinary Internal Medicine, Faculty of Agriculture, Yamaguchi University, 753-8515 Yamaguchi, Japan. Phone and fax: (81) 83-933-5895. E-mail:
InokumaHisashi{at}aol.com.


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Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, September 2002, p. 1132-1136, Vol. 9, No. 5
1071-412X/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/CDLI.9.5.1132-1136.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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