IRELAND

The next step in the research process brought further developments:
‘The detection of Campylobacter ureolyticus in patients with
gastroenteritis led to the need to develop a culture medium that would
allow us to grow the organism from human faeces. This approach to
microbiology is exactly the opposite strategy from that used until now,
whereby investigations always began with first growing the organism as
a culture. The challenge in our case was to have the means to grow our
rather exacting organism of choice while suppressing the growth of any
competing microbes.’
Meeting this challenge brought more innovation. One of the research
team developed a new medium, which allowed the first-ever isolations
to be made for this organism in cases of gastroenteritis. Dr. Sleator
continues: ‘In fact, the first successful isolation of a wild-type strain from
human faeces was made by one of our students during his final
undergraduate year research project. Then, one of our Ph.D. students,
Monika Koziel, searched environmental reservoirs for the new pathogen.
She actually chose to look in-depth at cattle rather than poultry and
found the organism in cow’s milk.’ Dr. Koziel then decided to check
whether primates also harboured the organism, and, using the research
team’s newly developed medium, went on to grow an organism that
resembled Campylobacter ureolyticus from the faeces of sick lion-tailed
macaques. Initially, the ureolyticus-specific genes that she anticipated as
being in these colonies were not found, however. This led the team to
explore a new approach.
Dr. Lucey describes what happened next: ‘Many investigations later, it
transpired that we actually had a new campylobacter on our hands. Our
group had the naming of the new microbe; we named it Campylobacter
corcagiensis, after Cork, its county of origin. This was a thrilling discovery
for us. It’s not something we had anticipated having the honour of doing.’
The research team in Cork had embarked on this research with no sense
that they would end up making such a discovery: ‘What has happened
here is way beyond what we could have anticipated. What we had initially
set out to do was to solve a mystery around gastroenteritis – we can’t say
that we have solved the mystery but we have solved some parts of it.
And this makes us want to solve more of it.’
‘What has happened here is way
beyond what we could have anticipated.
What we had initially set out to do was
to solve a mystery around gastroenteritis
– we can’t say that we have solved the
mystery but we have solved some parts
of it. And this makes us want to solve
more of it.’
discovery Ireland 86,87
Dr. Brigid Lucey and Dr. Roy Sleator wish to acknowledge their team members Ms Aisling O'Doherty,
Medical Scientist, and Dr. Daniel Corcoran, Consultant Microbiologist; their gratitude also to Mr Brendan
O'Reilly and all the staff at the Microbiology Dept. of Cork University Hospital.