Neisseria meningitidis is a leading cause of infectious childhood mortality worldwide. Most research efforts have hitherto focused on disease isolates belonging to only a few hypervirulent clonal lineages. However, up to 10% of the healthy human population is temporarily colonized by genetically diverse strains mostly with little or no pathogenic potential. Currently, little is known about the ...

The biochemical and serological characteristics of lactose-utilizing strains of Neisseria were determined. These organisms were found in the nasopharynx of man and grew well on Thayer-Martin Selective Medium. They were compared with N. meningitidis to ascertain whether they were variants of this species. Differences between the lactose-using strains and the recognized species of Neisseria were ...

During 1971 and 1972, 71 cultures of neisseriae that attacked lactose were received by this laboratory. All strains except one from an eye swab were from the nasopharynx of healthy subjects. Nineteen similar strains from the nasopharynx were isolated in this laboratory. The characteristics of these strains were compared with those of Neisseria meningitidis, Neisseria pharyngis, Neisseria catarr...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s40793-017-0250-6.].

Neisseria meningitidis (Nm) and Neisseria lactamica (Nl) are commensal bacteria that live in the human nasopharynx, where they form microcolonies. In contrast to Nl, Nm occasionally causes blood and/or meningitis infection with often fatal consequences. Here, we studied interactions between neisserial strains during biofilm formation. Fluorescent strains were engineered and analyzed for growth ...

Natural sequence variation was investigated among serogroup A subgroup IV-1 Neisseria meningitidis isolated from diseased patients and healthy carriers in The Gambia, West Africa. The frequencies of DNA import were analysed by sequencing fragments of four linked genes encoding the immunogenic outer membrane proteins TbpB (transferrin binding protein B) and OpaA (an adhesin) plus two housekeepin...

Neisseria meningitidis is an important human pathogen that is capable of killing within hours of infection. Its normal habitat is the nasopharynx of adult humans. Here we identify a genomic island (the prp gene cluster) in N. meningitidis that enables this species to utilize propionic acid as a supplementary carbon source during growth, particularly under nutrient poor growth conditions. The pr...