Evidence of Genomic Instability in Campylobacter jejuni Isolated from Poultry

ABSTRACT Poultry isolates of Campylobacter jejuni derived from a survey of meat processing batches were genotyped by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of chromosomal DNA to establish the clonal relationships between single-colony isolates. In the majority of batches studied, one or two genotype patterns predominated. However, in one batch (batch A), 21 single-colony isolates gave 14 different PFGE genotypes. The banding patterns obtained with Sma I were sufficiently different to distinguish between genotypes, although the patterns also produced many common bands. The question of whether these isolates represented different clones or had a common clonal ancestry was addressed by additi…