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From the Departments of Venereologyt, Bristol Royal Infirmary, and the Royal United Hospital, Bath, the Public Health Laboratory*, Bristol, and the Family Planning Association Clinict, Bristol Royal InfirmaryThe first genital tract isolates of Chlamydia A were obtained from parents of babies suffering from TRIC ophthalmia neonatorum, by growth in the yolk sac of fertile eggs (Jones, Collier, and Smith, 1959;Jones, Al-Hussaini, and Dunlop, 1964). It was noted that the fathers of these babies were frequently suffering from non-gonococcal urethritis (NGU) and that the mothers often showed changes in the cervix. The isolation of Chlamydia from two of nine unselected males suffering from NGU confirmed the association of these organisms with non-specific genital infection (Dunlop, Al-Hussaini, Garland, Treharne, Harper, and Jones, 1965 (Dunlop, Vaughan-Jackson, Darougar, and Jones, 1972;Oriel, Reeve, Powis, Miller, and Nicol, 1972;Richmond, Hilton, and Clarke, 1972) and that they are only rarely isolated from equally promiscuous men without urethritis (Oriel and others, 1972; Richmond and others, 1972).However, a similar isolation rate was shown in men suffering from gonorrhoea (G) (Richmond and others, 1972) which threw doubt on whether a chlamydial infection was the initial cause of NGU, and raised the possibility that urethritis of any cause activated an existing but quiescent chlamydial infection in the male urethra. This activated infection appeared to be pathogenic since Chlamydia-positive patients with G were much more prone to develop post-gonococcal urethritis (PGU) than Chlamydia-negative G patients, and since the isolation rate of Chlamydia in men with NGU who had a long-standing untreated urethral

KC from the conjunctiva of a koala. Monoclonal antibodies raised to C. pneumoniae IOL207 and shown to be C. pneumoniae-specific confirmed that N16 was more closely related to C. pneumoniae than to C. psittaci. Thus DNA homology and monoclonal antibody data both suggest that horse chlamydiae, as exemplified by N16, form a new second strain of C. pneumoniae. This species is probably more widespread and diverse than the current literature would suggest.

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SUMMARYWe report the complete nucleotide sequence of bacteriophage Chpl. The genome was found to be 4877 bases long and it potentially codes for 11 proteins. Open reading frames (ORFs) 6 and 7 lie within ORFs 2 and 1 respectively but are in a second reading frame. No significant DNA homology was found when Chpl was compared to the EMBL database. The N-terminal amino acid sequences of the three structural proteins VP 1, VP2 and VP3 were determined and it was found that they were encoded by ORFs 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Amino acid homology studies revealed that VP1 has homology with the major structural protein of bacteriophages ~bX174 and S13, and that the protein inferred from ORF 4 shows homology to the A proteins of SX174, S13 and G4. The genome of Chpl has an organization similar to that of ~bX174 although it is 509 bases smaller. We propose that Chpl is a member of the Microviridae but that it is sufficiently different to warrant its own subfamily which we have called the Chlamydiavirinae.