A large surface array protein was found highly conserved in both species (not shown in this study) but was evident in the genomic sequence alignments (figure 1). Table 1 C. fetus subsp. fetus (Cff) and subsp. venerealis (Cfv) virulence factors compared with 4 other Campylobacter spp. Putative virulence type Other spp.a Cff Cfv* Bacterial adherence 9 3b 4b Motility 55–66 41 46 Two-component system genes 11–15 16 14 Toxin and resistance 15–20 9c 7c Membrane proteins 185–218 209 202 Summary of C. fetus virulence gene ORFs in C. fetus subsp. fetus (Cff) and subsp. venerealis

(Cfv) compared with 4 other Campylobacter spp. (adapted from Fouts et al). a C. jejuni, C. lari, C. upsaliensis, C. coli (Fouts et al. 2005) b Cff – PEB1 (3) – no other adherence homologues found; Cfv ORFs – PEB1(2), BAY 11-7082 supplier cadF(0), jlpA (1-poor homology), Fibronectin binding (1), 43-kDA MOMP (0) c not including resistance genes

for Cff and Cfv, toxin subunit ORFs only *N.B. Cfv genome incomplete The nucleotide alignment of Cfv contigs based on the closest sequenced genome Cff displayed the Cfv contig sequence in common between the two genomes (not Epigenetics inhibitor specific to Cfv) and Cfv contig sequence not found in Cff (specific to Cfv) (Figure 1). Of the 273 Cfv contigs, 251 contigs (993569 bp) were conserved with Cff and 22 contigs (86999 bp) specific to the Cfv genome compared to Cff. Contigs selleck products specific to Cfv were Contig1018, Contig1021, Contig1023, Contig1024, Contig1030, Contig1031, Contig1042, Contig1120, Contig1139, Contig1165, Contig1181, Contig1185, Contig1186, Contig419, Contig733, Contig846, Cediranib (AZD2171) Contig851, Contig872, Contig875, Contig914, Contig958 and Contig991 (ORF without strong homology to Cff are listed in Additional file 1). When probed against all available genome protein sequence information the Cfv specific contigs (Additional file 3: Table S1) had the following alignments;

two contigs (~4.9 Kb) with short alignments to only non-campylobacter bacterial species (Contigs914 and 875) (Campylobacter specific); five contigs (~20 Kb) with significant alignments to C. jejuni and C. coli plasmid genomes and short alignments to C. hominis and C. lari; ten contigs completely unique to Cfv (Cfv specific) (~32 Kb); and five contigs (~27 Kb) with significant protein alignments to Cff although this was not evident at the nucleotide sequence level. Cfv Open Reading Frame Analysis The C. fetus subsp. venerealis 1474 ORFs protein database search found 67 unique to Cfv (no protein alignments), 1174 conserved top match alignment to Cff, 116 conserved top match alignment to any other species, and 117 low significance alignments. ORF alignments to the non-redundant protein database found 12% Cfv insignificant and unique (Additional file 1), 51% with significant alignments and 37% with highly significant alignments.