Chlamydia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Chlamydia - Essay Example The main route of infection is vaginal, anal sexual contact and household contact. Children can become infected during passage through the birth canal of mother that carry Chlamydia (Redgrove & McLaughlin, 2014). Characteristics of Chlamydia trachomatis. Chlamydia trachomatis is an aerobic, obligate, intracellular parasite of eukaryotic cells. It is a Gram-negative bacteria, which demonstrate a coccoid or rod shape. Not taking into account fact that Chlamydia trachomatis is classified as Gram-negative bacterium, it lacks a peptidoglycan cell wall. Chlamydia trachomatis cannot synthesize its own ATP that is why in order to remain viable this bacteria require growing cells. Without host cell, C. trachomatis will die in a short period of time (Byrne, 2003). As was mentioned above, Chlamydia trachomatis is the one of the most common sexually transmitted disease: for example, in USA more than 4 million cases are diagnosed each year; furthermore, Chlamydia trachomatis is the main reason of preventable blindness (caused by a chlamydial infection called trachoma) in the world. Chlamydia trachomatis also is one of the major causes of infertility in women and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) (Redgrove & McLaughlin, 2014). Genome of Chlamydia trachomatis consists of 1,042,519 nucleotide base pairs that coding approximately 894 proteins. Chlamydia trachomatis carry one extrachromosomal plasmid, which have a 7493-base pair sequence with 1% nucleotide sequence variation. This plasmid has eight open reading frames that codes proteins more than 100 amino acids long. C. trachomatis plasmid is a main target for DNA-based diagnosis of diseases because one chlamydial particle carry approximately 7-10 copies of highly conserved plasmids (Stephens et al., 1998). Chlamydia trachomatis has a tricarboxylic acid cycle and glycolytic pathway. These metabolic pathways play a supporting role in chlamydial metabolism. Chlamydia