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July 7, 2019

BreakSeek: a breakpoint-based algorithm for full spectral range INDEL detection.

Although recent developed algorithms have integrated multiple signals to improve sensitivity for insertion and deletion (INDEL) detection, they are far from being perfect and still have great limitations in detecting a full size range of INDELs. Here we present BreakSeek, a novel breakpoint-based algorithm, which can unbiasedly and efficiently detect both homozygous and heterozygous INDELs, ranging from several base pairs to over thousands of base pairs, with accurate breakpoint and heterozygosity rate estimations. Comprehensive evaluations on both simulated and real datasets revealed that BreakSeek outperformed other existing methods on both sensitivity and specificity in detecting both small and large INDELs, and uncovered a significant amount of novel INDELs that were missed before. In addition, by incorporating sophisticated statistic models, we for the first time investigated and demonstrated the importance of handling false and conflicting signals for multi-signal integrated methods.© The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.


July 7, 2019

Complete genome sequencing of a multidrug-resistant and human-invasive Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium strain of the emerging sequence type 213 genotype.

Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium strain YU39 was isolated in 2005 in the state of Yucatán, Mexico, from a human systemic infection. The YU39 strain is representative of the multidrug-resistant emergent sequence type 213 (ST213) genotype. The YU39 complete genome is composed of a chromosome and seven plasmids. Copyright © 2015 Calva et al.


July 7, 2019

Surveillance of Klebsiella pneumoniae and antibiotic resistance a retrospective and comparative study through a period in Nepal

Among the Enterobacteriacea Klebsiella pneumoniae is for the most part obtained from clinical samples and most probable cause of a typical form of primary pneumonia. It can also responsible for a variety of extrapulmonary infections, counting enteritis and meningitis in infants, urinary tract infections in children and adults and septicaemia in all age groups. Like wise these pathogens are significant cause of hospital acquired infections right through the world. The remarkable increase in the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in bacteria noticed in recent years represents a considerable challenge to public health microbiology worldwide. Klebsiellae have a tendency to possess antibiotic resistant plasmids; as a result, infections with multiple antibiotic-resistant strains can be likely. Only some degree of studies had been accounted in this regard from Nepal. The study was performed from January 1999 to March 2001. To come upon the existing dated antibiotic resistance pattern of Klebsiella pneumoniae. The study was carried out at TUTH laboratory with the objectives to ascertain the prevalence of Klebsiella pneumoniae in conjunction with to calculate the significance antibiotic resistance correlation between various antibiotics. By which the later 15 years analysis of antibiotic resistance was evaluated with comparison to this study.In this scrutiny the result was established that the numbers of total isolates including both klebsiella pneumoniae and other Kebsiella species were 62 from urine samples, 78 from pus samples and 96 from sputum samples and 34 from other miscellaneous samples. In this study positive culture for Klebsiella pneumoniae was 32.83% for sputum samples, 23.62.% for urine samples and 24.57% for pus samples. Majority of the strains isolated were sensitive to ß- lactamases, Floroquinolones, Aminoglycosides, Tetracycline and Cotrimoxazole, combined antibiotics. The current review study from 1999 to 2014 discloses the frequency of infections due to klebsiella pneumoniae strains in the hospitalized patients and their tendency towards antibiotic resistance was on the increase. Large quantity of antibiotics exploited for human therapy has resulted in the selection of pathogenic bacteria resistant to multiple antimicrobial drugs. This has become a vital clinical and infection control challenge, particularly in resource-limited settings with far above the ground a raising rate of antimicrobial resistance.


July 7, 2019

Library construction for high-throughput mobile element identification and genotyping.

Mobile genetic elements are discrete DNA elements that can move around and copy themselves in a genome. As a ubiquitous component of the genome, mobile elements contribute to both genetic and epigenetic variation. Therefore, it is important to determine the genome-wide distribution of mobile elements. Here we present a targeted high-throughput sequencing protocol called Mobile Element Scanning (ME-Scan) for genome-wide mobile element detection. We will describe oligonucleotides design, sequencing library construction, and computational analysis for the ME-Scan protocol.


July 7, 2019

Tandem repeats in rodents genome and their mapping.

Tandemly-repeated sequences represent a unique class of eukaryotic DNA. Their content in the genome of higher eukaryotes mounts to tens of percents. However, the evolution of this class of sequences is poorly-studied. In our paper, 62 families of Mus musculus tandem repeats are analyzed by bioinformatic methods, and 7 of them are analyzed by fluorescence in situ hybridization. It is shown that the same tandem repeat sets co-occure only in closely related species of mice. But even in such species we observe differences in localization on the chromosomes and the number of individual tandem repeats. With increasing evolutionary distance only some of the tandem repeat families remain common for different species. It is shown, that the use of a combination of bioinformatics and molecular biology techniques is very perspective for further studies of the evolution of tandem repeats.


July 7, 2019

First complete genome sequences of Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus Rosenbach 1884 (DSM 20231T), determined by PacBio Single-Molecule Real-Time Technology.

The first complete genome sequences of Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus Rosenbach 1884 strain DSM 20231(T), the type strain of the bacterium causing staphylococcal disease, were determined using PacBio RS II. The sequences represent the chromosome (2,755,072 bp long; G+C content, 32.86%) and a plasmid (27,490 bp long; G+C content, 30.69%). Copyright © 2015 Shiroma et al.


July 7, 2019

Draft genome sequences of Burkholderia contaminans, a Burkholderia cepacia complex species that is increasingly recovered from cystic fibrosis patients.

Burkholderia contaminans belongs to the Burkholderia cepacia complex (BCC), a group of bacteria that are ubiquitous in the environment and capable of infecting the immunocompromised and people with cystic fibrosis. We report here draft genome sequences for the B. contaminans type strain LMG 23361 and an Argentinian cystic fibrosis sputum isolate. Copyright © 2015 Bloodworth et al.


July 7, 2019

Emergence of Serotype IV group B Streptococcus adult invasive disease in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada, is driven by colonal sequence type 459 strains.

Serotype IV group B Streptococcus (GBS) is emerging in Canada and the United States with rates as high as 5% of the total burden of adult invasive GBS disease. To understand this emergence, we studied the population structure and assessed the antimicrobial susceptibility of serotype IV isolates causing adult invasive infection in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada, between 2010 and 2014. Whole-genome sequencing was used to determine multilocus sequence typing information and identify genes encoding antimicrobial resistance in 85 invasive serotype IV GBS strains. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by standard methods. Strain divergence was assessed using genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism analysis. Serotype IV strains were responsible for 16.9% of adult invasive GBS infections in Manitoba and Saskatchewan during the period. The majority of serotype IV isolates (89%) were clonally related, tetracycline-, erythromycin-, and clindamycin-resistant sequence type 459 (ST459) strains that possessed genes tetM and ermTR. Genome comparisons between ST459 and serotype V ST1 GBS identified several areas of recombination in an overall similar genomic background. Serotype IV ST459 GBS strains are expanding and causing a substantial percentage of adult invasive GBS disease. This emergence may be linked to the acquisition of resistance to tetracycline, macrolides, and lincosamides. Copyright © 2015, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.


July 7, 2019

Scalable multi whole-genome alignment using recursive exact matching

The emergence of third generation sequencing technologies has brought near perfect de-novo genome assembly within reach. This clears the way towards reference-free detection of genomic variations. In this paper, we introduce a novel concept for aligning whole-genomes which allows the alignment of multiple genomes. Alignments are constructed in a recursive manner, in which alignment decisions are statistically supported. Computational performance is achieved by splitting an initial indexing data structure into a multitude of smaller indices. We show that our method can be used to detect high resolution structural variations between two human genomes, and that it can be used to obtain a high quality multiple genome alignment of at least nineteen Mycobacterium tuberculosis genomes. An implementation of the outlined algorithm called REVEAL is available on: https://github.com/jasperlinthorst/REVEAL


July 7, 2019

Identification of the genomic insertion site of the thyroid peroxidase promoter-Cre recombinase transgene using a novel, efficient, next-generation DNA sequencing method.

It can be useful to know the transgene insertion site in transgenic mice for a variety of reasons, but determining the insertion site generally is a time consuming, expensive, and laborious task.A simple method is presented to determine transgene insertion sites that combines the enrichment of a sequencing library by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for sequences containing the transgene, followed by next-generation sequencing of the enriched library. This method was applied to determine the site of integration of the thyroid peroxidase promoter-Cre recombinase mouse transgene that is commonly used to create thyroid-specific gene deletions.The insertion site was found to be between bp 12,372,316 and 12,372,324 on mouse chromosome 9, with the nearest characterized genes being Cntn5 and Jrkl, ~1.5 and 0.9?Mbp from the transgene, respectively. One advantage of knowing a transgene insertion site is that it facilitates distinguishing hemizygous from homozygous transgenic mice. Although this can be accomplished by real-time quantitative PCR, the expected Ct difference is only one cycle, which is challenging to assess accurately. Therefore, the transgene insertion site information was used to develop a 3-primer qualitative PCR assay that readily distinguishes wild type, hemizygous, and homozygous TPO-Cre mice based upon size differences of the wild type and transgenic allele PCR products.Identification of the genomic insertion site of the thyroid peroxidase promoter-Cre mouse transgene should facilitate the use of these mice in studies of thyroid biology.


July 7, 2019

Keeping an eye on P. aeruginosa.

This month’s Genome Watch looks at how whole-genome sequencing (WGS) can be used to track the source of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection and to investigate the transition and adaptation of this opportunistic pathogen from the environment to the human host.


July 7, 2019

Retrohoming of a mobile group II intron in human cells suggests how eukaryotes limit group II intron proliferation.

Mobile bacterial group II introns are evolutionary ancestors of spliceosomal introns and retroelements in eukaryotes. They consist of an autocatalytic intron RNA (a “ribozyme”) and an intron-encoded reverse transcriptase, which function together to promote intron integration into new DNA sites by a mechanism termed “retrohoming”. Although mobile group II introns splice and retrohome efficiently in bacteria, all examined thus far function inefficiently in eukaryotes, where their ribozyme activity is limited by low Mg2+ concentrations, and intron-containing transcripts are subject to nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) and translational repression. Here, by using RNA polymerase II to express a humanized group II intron reverse transcriptase and T7 RNA polymerase to express intron transcripts resistant to NMD, we find that simply supplementing culture medium with Mg2+ induces the Lactococcus lactis Ll.LtrB intron to retrohome into plasmid and chromosomal sites, the latter at frequencies up to ~0.1%, in viable HEK-293 cells. Surprisingly, under these conditions, the Ll.LtrB intron reverse transcriptase is required for retrohoming but not for RNA splicing as in bacteria. By using a genetic assay for in vivo selections combined with deep sequencing, we identified intron RNA mutations that enhance retrohoming in human cells, but <4-fold and not without added Mg2+. Further, the selected mutations lie outside the ribozyme catalytic core, which appears not readily modified to function efficiently at low Mg2+ concentrations. Our results reveal differences between group II intron retrohoming in human cells and bacteria and suggest constraints on critical nucleotide residues of the ribozyme core that limit how much group II intron retrohoming in eukaryotes can be enhanced. These findings have implications for group II intron use for gene targeting in eukaryotes and suggest how differences in intracellular Mg2+ concentrations between bacteria and eukarya may have impacted the evolution of introns and gene expression mechanisms.


July 7, 2019

Complete genome sequence of Acinetobacter baumannii strain B8300, which displays high twitching motility.

Acinetobacter baumannii has emerged as an important nosocomial pathogen causing health care-associated infections. In this study, we determined the genome of a twitching-positive clinical strain, B8300, isolated from a hospital in southern India. De novo assembly of PacBio long-read sequencing data generated the B8300 genome that consists of a chromosome of 3.82 Mbp and a plasmid of 25.15 kbp. Copyright © 2015 Vijaykumar et al.


July 7, 2019

First complete genome sequence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Schroeter 1872) Migula 1900 (DSM 50071T), determined using PacBio Single-Molecule Real-Time Technology.

The first complete genome sequence of the type strain Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Schroeter 1872) Migula 1900 (DSM 50071(T)) was determined in a single contig by PacBio RS II. The genome (6,317,050 bp, G+C content of 66.52%) contained 10 sets of >1,000-bp identical sequence pairs and 183 tandem repeats. Copyright © 2015 Nakano et al.


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