Public Health Agency of Canada, Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health, Winnipeg, Canada.
Genomics Proteomics Bioinformatics. 2010 Sep;8(3):159-69. doi: 10.1016/S1672-0229(10)60018-6.
Neisseria meningitidis is the agent of invasive meningococcal disease, including cerebral meningitis and septicemia. Because the diseases caused by different clonal groups (sequence types) have their own epidemiological characteristics, it is important to understand the differences among the genomes of the N. meningitidis clonal groups. To this end, a novel interpretation of a structural dot plot of genomes was devised and applied; exact nucleotide matches between the genomes of N. meningitidis serogroup A strain Z2491 and serogroup B strain MC58 were identified, leading to the specification of various structural regions. Known and putative virulence genes for each N. meningitidis strain were then classified into these regions. We found that virulence genes of MC58 tend more to the translocated regions (chromosomal segments in new sequence contexts) than do those of Z2491, notably tending towards the interface between one of the translocated regions and the collinear region. Within the col-linear region, virulence genes tend to occur within 16 kb of gaps in the exact matches. Verification of these tendencies using genes clustered in the cps locus was sufficiently supportive to suggest that these tendencies can be used to focus the search for and understanding of virulence genes and mechanisms of pathogenicity in these two organisms.
脑膜炎奈瑟菌是侵袭性脑膜炎球菌病的病原体，包括脑脊髓膜炎和败血症。由于不同克隆群（序列型）引起的疾病具有各自的流行病学特征，因此了解脑膜炎奈瑟菌克隆群基因组之间的差异很重要。为此，设计并应用了一种新的基因组结构点图解释；鉴定了脑膜炎奈瑟菌 A 群菌株 Z2491 和 B 群菌株 MC58 基因组之间的确切核苷酸匹配，从而确定了各种结构区域。然后将每个脑膜炎奈瑟菌菌株的已知和推定的毒力基因分类到这些区域中。我们发现，MC58 的毒力基因比 Z2491 更倾向于易位区域（新序列背景下的染色体片段），特别是倾向于易位区域之一与共线性区域之间的界面。在共线性区域内，毒力基因倾向于发生在精确匹配的间隙内 16 kb 范围内。使用 cps 基因座聚类的基因对这些趋势进行验证，足以表明这些趋势可用于集中搜索和理解这两种生物体中的毒力基因和致病性机制。
