Rickettsiae phylogeny: a multigenic approach

• Published in: Microbiology (Society for General Microbiology) Vol. 153; no. 1; pp. 160 - 168
• Main Authors: Vitorino, Liliana, Chelo, Ivo M, Bacellar, Fatima, Ze-Ze, Libia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Reading Soc General Microbiol 01.01.2007; Society for General Microbiology
• Subjects: Animals; Bacteriology; Biological and medical sciences; Cercopithecus aethiops; DNA, Ribosomal Spacer - genetics; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Genes, Bacterial - genetics; Microbiology; Phylogeny; Rickettsia; Rickettsia - classification; Rickettsia - genetics; Species Specificity; Systematics; Vero Cells; Rickettsiales; Bacteria; Rickettsieae; Phylogeny; Rickettsia; Rickettsiaceae
• ISSN: 1350-0872; 1465-2080
• DOI: 10.1099/mic.0.2006/001149-0

1 Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências. Centro de Genética e Biologia Molecular and Instituto de Ciência Aplicada e Tecnologia. Edifício ICAT, Campus FCUL, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal 2 CEVDI, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr Ricardo Jorge, INSA, Av. Padre Cruz, 1649-016 Lisboa, Portugal Correspondence Líbia Zé-Zé libia.zeze{at}insa.min-saude.pt The development of molecular taxonomic methods has provided a large amount of data in the reorganization of Rickettsiae taxonomy. Nevertheless, phylogenetic relationships among some groups and species delimitation remain unclear. To clarify rickettsial phylogeny, a multigenic approach was used for the first time for the genus Rickettsia , based on simultaneous analyses of eight loci: atpA , recA , virB4 , dnaA , dnaK , rrl-rrf internal transcribed spacer, ompA and gltA . Concatenation of different nucleotide sequences resulted in an improvement in phylogenetic resolution when compared to single gene data. This multigenic approach has enabled the differentiation of many groups, including the spotted fever group which includes a great number of closely related species. The reliability of some previously recognized groups was evaluated. Abbreviations: d N /d S , non-synonymous/synonymous substitutions distances ratio; ITS, internal transcribed spacer; ML, maximum-likelihood; MLST, multilocus sequence typing; MP, maximum-parsimony; NJ, neighbour-joining; SFG, spotted fever group; TG, typhus group A table of GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the sequences reported in this paper is available as supplementary data with the online version of this paper. Present address: CEVDI, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr Ricardo Jorge, INSA, Av. Padre Cruz, 1649-016 Lisboa, Portugal.