Genome-wide Analysis of Chlamydophila pneumoniae Gene Expression at the Late Stage of Infection

Koshiro Miura¹, Hidehiro Toh¹, Hideki Hirakawa², Manabu Sugii¹, Masayuki Murata¹, Kenta Nakai³, Kosuke Tashiro⁴, Satoru Kuhara⁴, Yoshinao Azuma¹^,* and Mutsunori Shirai¹

¹ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Yamaguchi University School of Medicine, 1-1-1 Minami-Kogushi, Ube, Yamaguchi 755-8505, Japan
² Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences, Kyushu University, Hakozaki 6-10-1, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan
³ Laboratory of Functional Analysis in silico, Human Genome Center, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Shirokane-dai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8639, Japan
⁴ Graduate School of Genetic Resources Technology, Kyushu University, 6-10-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan

Received 15 June 2007 ; accepted 12 December 2007.

Chlamydophila pneumoniae, an obligate intracellular eubacterium,changes its form from a vegetative reticulate body into an infectiouselementary body during the late stage of its infection cycle.Comprehension of the molecular events in the morphological changeis important to understand the switching mechanism between acuteand chronic infection, which is deemed to relate to the pathogenesisof atherosclerosis. Herein, we have attempted to screen genesexpressed in the late stage with a genome-wide DNA microarray,resulting in nomination of 17 genes as the late-stage genes.Fourteen of the 17 genes and six other genes predicted as late-stagegenes were confirmed to be up-regulated in the late stage witha quantitative reverse transcriptase–polymerase chainreaction. These 20 late-stage genes were classified into twogroups by clustering analysis: ‘drastically induced’and ‘moderately induced’ genes. Out of eight drasticallyinduced genes, four contain ${sigma}$ ²⁸ promoter-like sequences and theother four contain an upstream common sequence. It suggeststhat besides ${sigma}$ ²⁸, there are certain up-regulatory mechanismsat the late stage, which may be involved in the chlamydial morphologicalchange and thus pathogenesis.

Key words: Chlamydophila pneumoniae; DNA microarray; genome; chlamydia; gene expression

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel. +81 836-22-2227. Fax. +81 836-22-2415. E-mail: yazuma{at}yamaguchi-u.ac.jp

Edited by Katsumi Isono

Present address: Department of Veterinary Biosciences, The OhioState University, 1900 Coffey Rd., Columbus, OH 43210, USA

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DNA Research

Genome-wide Analysis of Chlamydophila pneumoniae Gene Expression at the Late Stage of Infection