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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » National Animal Disease Center » Infectious Bacterial Diseases Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #170592
Title: MOLECULAR TARGETS FOR RAPID IDENTIFICATION OF BRUCELLA SPP.

Author
item RATUSHNA, VLADYSLAVA - UNIV. OF NORTH CAROLINA
item STURGILL, DAVID - VA POLYTECHNIC
item RAMAMOORTHY, SHEELA - VA POLYTECHNIC
item REICHOW, SHERRY - VA POLYTECHNIC
item HE, YONGQUN - VA BIOINFORMATICS INST.
item LATHIGRA, RAJU - WALTER REED ARMY INST.
item SRIRANGANATHAN, NAMMALWAR - VA POLYTECHNIC
item Halling, Shirley
item BOYLE, STEPHEN - VA POLYTECHNIC
item GIBAS, CYNTHIA - UNIV. OF NORTH CAROLINA

Submitted to: BMC Microbiology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/22/2006
Publication Date: 2/22/2006
Citation: Ratushna, V.G., Sturgill, D.M., Ramamoorthy, S., Reichow, S.A., He, Y., Lathigra, R., Sriranganathan, N., Halling, S.M., Boyle, S.M., Gibas, C.J. 2006. Molecular targets for rapid identification of Brucella spp. BMC Microbiology. 6(13). Available: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/6/13.

Interpretive Summary: Genomic sequences are available for three agents of brucellosis and their gene expression was studied in an effort to determine the basis of host preference and virulence. Differences in gene expression were found among three agents of brucellosis even though their sequences are very similar to each other. These results will be part of the basic information needed to rapidly identify agents of brucellosis in case of either civilian or agricultural bioterrorism and to identify genes for further study in the development of wildlife vaccines.

Technical Abstract: In the process of designing microarrays for comparative functional genomics experiments, we compared the genomes of three Brucella species. We identified a superset of known and hypothetical coding sequences that comprises genes common to the three species, and genes that are present in only one or two of the species. Comparisons were made between known and predicted coding regions from the public and annotated genomes of B. melitensis (DelVecchio et al., 2002) and B. suis (Paulsen et al, 2002), and the draft sequence of the B. abortus genome (Halling et al., 2003, in preparation). This comparison confirmed known differences between the genomes of B. melitensis and B. suis, and identified subsets of features which were predicted to be of interest in functional comparison of B. melitensis and B. suis to B. abortus. Differentiating sequence regions from B. melitensis and B. suis were used to develop PCR primers for experiments in which the same primers were also used to test for the existence and expression of these genes in B. abortus. While only B. suis is found to have a significant number of unique genes, combinations of genes that exist in only two out of three genomes were identified and confirmed by PCR. These combinations will discriminate unambiguously between B. suis, B. melitensis, and B. abortus. Differentiating sequence features alone may explain differences in virulence or host specificity, but whether genes are expressed is more significant. While not all of the differentiating genes identified were transcribed in vivo as determined by RT-PCR, a group of genes sufficient to discriminate among the three species in expression experiments was identified. We present an overview of these genomic differences and discuss their significance in the context of host preference and virulence.