Campylobacter coli isolated in Brazil typed by core genome Multilocus Sequence Typing shows high genomic diversity in a global context

Campylobacter has been one of the most common causative agent of bacterial food-borne gastroenteritis in humans worldwide. However, in Brazil the campylobacteriosis has been a neglected disease and there is insufficient data to estimate the incidence of this pathogen in the country. The current study aimed to determine the phylogenetic relationships among Campylobacter coli strains isolated in Brazil and to compare them with international Campylobacter isolates available in some public databases. A total of 63C. coli strains isolated in Brazil were studied. The MLST analysis showed 18 different STs including three STs not yet described in the PubMLST database. The cgMLST allocated the Brazilian strains studied into five main clusters and each cluster comprised groups of strains with nearly identical cgMLST profiles and with significant genetic distance observed among the distinct clusters. The comparison of the Brazilian strains with 3401 isolates from different countries showed a wide distribution of these strains isolated in this country. The results showed a high similarity among some strains studied and a wide distribution of the Brazilian strains when compared to isolates from different countries, which is an interesting data set since it showed a high genetic diversity of these strains from Brazil in a global context. This study contributed for a better genomic characterization of C. coli strains isolated in Brazil and provided important information about the diversity of this clinically-relevant pathogen. •Campylobacteriosis has been a neglected disease in Brazil, the largest poultry meat exporter.•The strains studied were isolated from different sources during 16 years in Brazil.•The MLST analysis showed 18 different STs including STs not described in the database.•The cgMLST showed a wide distribution of these strains isolated in this country.•This study provides important information about the diversity of this relevant pathogen.