assessment of virulence factors in strains of and isolated from patients with Infective Endocarditis.

and belong to the Mitis group, which are mostly commensals in the human oral cavity. Even though and are oral commensals, they can be opportunistic pathogens causing infective endocarditis. A recent taxonomic re-evaluation of the Mitis group has embedded the species and into the species as subspecies. In this study, the distribution of virulence factors that contribute to bacterial immune evasion, colonization and adhesion was assessed in clinical strains of (subsp. , subsp. and subsp. ) and Forty clinical (subsp. , subsp. dentisani and subsp. ) and genomes were annotated with the pipeline PanFunPro and aligned against the VFDB database for assessment of virulence factors. Three homologues of , and , encoding adhesion proteins, were present in all strains. Seven homologues of and , of importance regarding survival in blood and modulation of the human immune system, were variously present in the genomes. Few subspecies specific differences were observed. homologues were identified in subsp. , whereas homologues were identified in subsp. and subsp. Differences in the presence of virulence factors among the three subspecies were observed. The virulence gene profiles of the 40  and (subsp. , subsp. and subsp. ) contribute with important new knowledge regarding these species and new subspecies.