Genome informatics and vaccine targets in Corynebacterium urealyticum using two whole genomes, comparative genomics, and reverse vaccinology

BMC Genomics

Research

Jochen Blom¹  Debmalya Barh²  Vasco Azevedo³  Luis Carlos Guimarães³  Artur Silva⁴  Rommel Thiago Jucá Ramos⁴  Siomar de Castro Soares⁵  Eva Trost⁶ 

[1] Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Ludwigstasse, 23, Giessen, Germany;Centre for Genomics and Applied Gene Technology, Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology (IIOAB), WB-721172, Nonakuri, Purba Medinipur, India;Department of General Biology, Institute of Biological Sciences, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Avenue Antônio Carlos, 6627, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil;Department of Genetics, Institute of Biological Sciences, Federal University of Pará, Avenue Augusto Corrêa, 01, Belém, Pará, Brazil;Department of Preventive Veterinary Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Avenue Antônio Carlos, 6627, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil;Institut für Hygiene, Universitätsklinikum Münster, Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1, Münster, Germany;

关键词: Corynebacterium urealyticum;    comparative genomics;    metabolic pathway;    genome plasticity;    antigenic targets;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-16-S5-S7

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCorynebacterium urealyticum is an opportunistic pathogen that normally lives on skin and mucous membranes in humans. This high Gram-positive bacteria can cause acute or encrusted cystitis, encrusted pyelitis, and pyelonephritis in immunocompromised patients. The bacteria is multi-drug resistant, and knowledge about the genes that contribute to its virulence is very limited. Two complete genome sequences were used in this comparative genomic study: C. urealyticum DSM 7109 and C. urealyticum DSM 7111.ResultsWe used comparative genomics strategies to compare the two strains, DSM 7109 and DSM 7111, and to analyze their metabolic pathways, genome plasticity, and to predict putative antigenic targets. The genomes of these two strains together encode 2,115 non-redundant coding sequences, 1,823 of which are common to both genomes. We identified 188 strain-specific genes in DSM 7109 and 104 strain-specific genes in DSM 7111. The high number of strain-specific genes may be a result of horizontal gene transfer triggered by the large number of transposons in the genomes of these two strains. Screening for virulence factors revealed the presence of the spaDEF operon that encodes pili forming proteins. Therefore, spaDEF may play a pivotal role in facilitating the adhesion of the pathogen to the host tissue. Application of the reverse vaccinology method revealed 19 putative antigenic proteins that may be used in future studies as candidate drug or vaccine targets.ConclusionsThe genome features and the presence of virulence factors in genomic islands in the two strains of C. urealyticum provide insights in the lifestyle of this opportunistic pathogen and may be useful in developing future therapeutic strategies.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Guimarães et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.