Cronobacter sakazakii is an important foodborne pathogens causing rare but life-threatening diseases in neonates and infants. CRISPR-Cas system is a new prokaryotic defense system that provides adaptive immunity against phages, latter play an vital role on the evolution and pathogenicity of host bacteria. In this study, we found that genome sizes of C. sakazakii strains had a significant positi...

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) are diarrheagenic pathogens that colonize the intestinal tract through the formation of attaching and effacing lesions, induced by effectors translocated via a type III secretion system (T3SS) encoded on the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE). In EHEC O157, numerous virulence factors, including around 40 T3SS effect...

BACKGROUND Shiga toxin (stx) genes have been transferred to numerous bacteria, one of which is E. coli O157:H7. It is a common belief that stx gene is transferred by bacteriophages, because stx genes are located on lambdoid prophages in the E. coli O157:H7 genome. Both E. coli O157:H7 and non-pathogenic E. coli are highly enriched in cattle feedlots. We hypothesized that strong UV radiation in ...

Streptococcus pyogenes, one of the major human pathogens, is a unique species since it has acquired diverse strain-specific virulence properties mainly through the acquisition of streptococcal prophages. In addition, S. pyogenes possesses clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas systems that can restrict horizontal gene transfer (HGT) including phage insertion. The...

Phage_Finder, a heuristic computer program, was created to identify prophage regions in completed bacterial genomes. Using a test dataset of 42 bacterial genomes whose prophages have been manually identified, Phage_Finder found 91% of the regions, resulting in 7% false positive and 9% false negative prophages. A search of 302 complete bacterial genomes predicted 403 putative prophage regions, a...

In the past 30 years, Salmonella bloodstream infections have become a significant health problem in sub-Saharan Africa and are responsible for the deaths of an estimated 390,000 people each year. The disease is predominantly caused by a recently described sequence type of Salmonella Typhimurium: ST313, which has a distinctive set of prophage sequences. We have thoroughly characterized the ST313...

The Burkholderia cenocepacia epidemic ET12 lineage belongs to the genomovar IIIA including the reference strain J2315, a highly transmissible epidemic B. cenocepacia lineage. Members of this lineage are able to cause lung infections in immunocompromised and cystic fibrosis patients. In this study, we describe the genome of F01, an environmental B. cenocepacia strain isolated from soil in Burkin...

Salmonella isolates harbour a range of resident prophages which can influence their virulence and ability to compete and survive in their environment. Phage gene profiling of a range of phage types of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) indicates a significant level of correlation of phage gene profile with phage type as well as correlation with genotypes de...

Strains of Staphylococcus aureus, an important human pathogen, display up to 20% variability in their genome sequence, and most sequence information is available for human clinical isolates that have not been subjected to genetic analysis of virulence attributes. S. aureus strain Newman, which was also isolated from a human infection, displays robust virulence properties in animal models of dis...