Review of the Food-borne Zoonoses Research ... - ARCHIVE: Defra

Campylobacter Research Projects
Project code: OZ0604
Project title: Characterisation of strain variation in Campylobacter
jejuni.
Start date (dd/mm/yy): 01/04/1999
End date (dd/mm/yy): 30/09/2004
£774,549
Total cost:
Affiliation: University of Oxford
Sub-contractor(s): HPA
Project code: OZ0611
Project title: Development of a comprehensive MLST database for
assessment of Campylobacter risk factors
Start date (dd/mm/yy): 01/07/2005
End date (dd/mm/yy): 30/06/2008
£503,312.00
Total cost:
Affiliation: University of Oxford
Sub-contractor(s):
Abstract of research
OZ0604
Campylobacter species, particularly Campylobacter jejuni, are a major cause of human
gastro-enteritis in the UK and elsewhere. In the majority of infections, which are
sporadic, the precise epidemiology is not determined, although several food producing
animals have been implicated as important sources of infection. The epidemiology of
zoonotic transmission of C. jejuni to man remains obscure due to inconsistencies within
and between the various phenotyping and molecular typing methods used to
characterise C. jejuni isolates. These inconsistencies arise from the inability of the
current methods to unambiguously define strain types and genetic lineages, and the lack
of precise understanding of the variation which they index. This work will address these
problems, definitively establishing the range and mechanisms of genetic variability in
populations of C. jejuni, by the application of the most recently developed sequence
typing technologies to a minimum of 1500 isolates, representative of those obtained from
human infections, farm animals, the human food chain, and the environment. Multilocus
sequence typing (MLST), which identifies strain relationships on the basis of neutral
variation in housekeeping genes, and antigen gene sequence typing, which will be used
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