Number : DAMD 17 - 03 - 2 - 0038 TITLE : Structural Genomics of Bacterial Virulence Factors PRINCIPAL

Anthrax disease is caused by a bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Its virulence has been associated with two plasmids, pXO1 and pXO2. Using a combination of advanced bioinformatics tools, including context analysis, distant homology and fold recognition, we have re-annotated the predicted open reading frames on the pXO1 plasmid, most of which were described as proteins of unknown function in previous analyses. Thanks to improved annotation tools we significantly enhanced the annotation of the pXO1 plasmid, bringing the total number of ORFs with some level of functional annotation from 48 to over 100. The new results also clearly show the mosaic nature of pXO1 and give tantalizing hints about the origin of anthrax virulence. The highlights of the new finding are two type IV secretion system-like clusters present on the pathogenicity island of the pXO1 plasmid, as well as at least three clusters related to DNA processing. Supplemental material available online at http://bioinformatics.burnham.org/pXO1.