The zoonotic pathogen Campylobacter is the leading cause for bacterial foodborne infections in humans. Campylobacters are most commonly transmitted via the consumption of undercooked poultry meat or raw milk products. The decreasing costs of whole genome sequencing enabled large genome-based analyses of the evolution and population structure of this pathogen, as well as the development of novel high-throughput molecular typing methods. Here, we review the evolutionary development and the population diversity of the two most clinically relevant Campylobacter species; C. jejuni and C. coli. The state-of-the-art phylogenetic studies showed clustering of C. jejuni lineages into host specialists and generalists with coexisting lifestyles in chicken and livestock-associated hosts, as well as the separation of C. coli isolates of riparian origin (waterfowl, water) from C. coli isolated from clinical and farm-related samples. We will give an overview of recombination between both species and the potential impact of horizontal gene transfer on host adaptation in Campylobacter. Additionally, this review briefly places the current knowledge of the population structure of other Campylobacter species such as C. lari, C. concisus and C. upsaliensis into perspective. We also provide an overview of how molecular typing methods such as multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and whole genome MLST have been used to detect and trace Campylobacter outbreaks along the food chain.
Keywords: Bacterial evolution; Host associations; Population genomics; Public health.