title: Spotted fever group rickettsia closely related to Rickettsia monacensis isolated from ticks in South Jeolla province, Korea.
abstract: Rickettsia monacensis, a spotted fever group rickettsia, was isolated from Ixodes nipponensis ticks collected from live-captured small mammals in South Jeolla province, Korea in 2006. Homogenates of tick tissues were inoculated into L929 and Vero cell monolayers using shell vial assays. After several passages, Giemsa staining revealed rickettsia-like organisms in the inoculated Vero cells, but not the L929 cells. Sequencing analysis revealed that the ompA-small part (25-614 bp region), ompA-large part (2849-4455 bp region), nearly full-length ompB (58-4889 bp region) and gltA (196-1236 bp region) of the isolates had similarities of 100%, 99.8%, 99.3% and 99.5%, respectively, to those of R. monacensis. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis showed that the isolate was grouped into the cluster in the same way as R. monacensis in the trees of all genes examined. These results strongly suggest that the isolate is closely related to R. monacensis. As far as is known, this is the first report of isolation of R. monacensis from ticks in Korea.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, College of Medicine, Konkuk University, 120 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 143-701, Korea.
authors.forename: Kyung-Min
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Yeon-Joo
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Sun-Hye
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Shin
authors.forename: Min-Kyung
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Hyeon-Je
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Heung-Chul
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Terry A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.forename: Allen L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Richards
authors.forename: Kyung-Hee
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Won-Jong
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Jang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D002460:Cell Line; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D018884:Ixodes / Q000382:microbiology*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D012281:Rickettsia / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D004269:DNA, Bacterial
keywords: Rickettsia monacensis; ompA; ompB; polymerase chain reaction