Comparative genomics of several strains of Erwinia amylovora, a plant pathogenic bacterium causal agent of fire blight disease, revealed that its diversity is primarily attributable to the flexible genome comprised of plasmids. We recently identified and sequenced in full a novel 65.8 kb plasmid, called pEI70. Annotation revealed a lack of known virulence-related genes, but found evidence for a...

The genus Babesia comprises protozoa that cause diseases known as babesiosis. Dogs are commonly affected by Babesia canis or Babesia gibsoni. Babesia canis is divided into the subspecies Babesia canis canis, Babesia canis vogeli and Babesia canis rossi. Among these, Babesia canis vogeli predominates in Brazil. The objective of this study was to conduct a phylogenetic analysis on Babesia isolate...

Cellulolytic enzymes are generally composed of multienzyme systems and are divided into three classes, endoglucanase, exoglucanase and β-glucosidase. They work synergistically to hydrolyze cellulose molecules to glucose. Fungal exoglucanase (CBH) is a unique enzyme, capable of degrading highly ordered crystalline cellulose. Here we report the isolation of both genomic and cDNA clone and coding ...

A linkage map of expressed sequence tag (EST)-based markers in radish (Raphanus sativus L.) was constructed using a low-cost and high-efficiency single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping method named multiplex polymerase chain reaction-mixed probe dot-blot analysis developed in this study. Seven hundred and forty-six SNP markers derived from EST sequences of R. sativus were assigned to ni...

INFERRING PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CLOSELY RELATED TAXA CAN BE HINDERED BY THREE FACTORS: (1) the lack of informative molecular variation at short evolutionary timescale; (2) the lack of established markers in poorly studied taxa; and (3) the potential phylogenetic conflicts among different genomic regions due to incomplete lineage sorting or introgression. In this context, Restrictio...

We investigated the utility of the Gossypium arboreum EST sequences in the GenBank database for developing PCR-based markers targeting known-function genes in cultivated tetraploid cottons, G. hirsutum and G. barbadense. Four hundred sixty-five randomly selected ESTs from this library were subjected to BLASTn search against all GenBank databases, of which putative function was assigned to 93 ES...

Transposable elements (TE) exist in the genomes of nearly all eukaryotes. TE mobilization through 'cut-and-paste' or 'copy-and-paste' mechanisms causes their insertions into other repetitive sequences, gene loci and other DNA. An insertion of a TE commonly creates a unique TE junction in the genome. TE junctions are also randomly distributed along chromosomes and therefore useful for genome-wid...

Several haemorrhagic fevers are caused by highly pathogenic viruses that must be handled in Biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) containment. These zoonotic infections have an important impact on public health and the development of a rapid and differential diagnosis in case of outbreak in risk areas represents a critical priority. We have demonstrated the potential of a DNA resequencing microarray (Patho...

Background Cellulose is a homopolysaccharide composed of extracellular D-glucose monomers connected by glycosidic linkages in b-1,4 conformation which can be synthesized by a variety of living organisms, possessing numerous applications in food, pharmaceutical, medical area, etc.[1][2]. In 1990, cellulose synthase operon encoding four proteins required for bacterial cellulose (BC) biosynthesis ...

A novel marine bacterial strain, HY1T, was isolated from sediment of the South China Sea. The strain was aerobic and heterotrophic and formed saffron yellow-pigmented colonies on marine agar 2216. Cells were non-motile, Gram-negative rods, frequently occurring in chains. BLASTN searches revealed that the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain HY1T showed high similarity with those of members of the g...