An ambitious project to sequence 5,000 microbial genomes was jointly initiated by a consortium of 10 institutions across China, including Nankai University, China CDC, Academy of Military Medical Science, Third Institute of Oceanography-Ministry of Natural Resources, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology-CAS, China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, Shandong University, Tianjin University of Science & Technology, East China University of Science and Technology, and Tianjin Biochip Corporation (TBC). TBC, a PacBio service provider in China, has led the sequencing phase of the project, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. We recently sat down with…
It’s a murder mystery of massive proportion, albeit on a miniature scale: Male-killing among several species of insects, caused by selfish symbiotic bacteria. Swiss researchers believe they have finally solved a question that has stumped scientists for decades, with potential implications for pest and infection control. Researchers have identified the toxin responsible for selective killing of male fruit flies (left) using PacBio sequencing. In a recent Nature publication, Toshiyuki Harumoto and Bruno Lemaitre of the Global Health Institute at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, have reported their findings regarding a toxin in Spiroplasma poulsonii, one…
When humans are infected with the Marburg virus, the result is often lethal, with hemorrhagic fever and other symptoms similar to Ebola. When bats are infected, the result is…. nothing. The tiny mammals remain asymptomatic. In order to crack this antiviral mystery, a multi-institutional team of scientists sequenced, assembled and analyzed the genome of the bat species Rousettus aegyptiacus, a natural reservoir of Marburg virus and the only known reservoir for any filovirus. Their findings contradicted previous hypotheses about bat antiviral immunity, which assumed that bats had enhanced antiviral defenses, controlling viral replication early in infection, and developing effective adaptive immune…
Haemophilus influenzae, a sample of which was deposited to the NCTC collection by Alexander Fleming, from his own nose. The genomes of 3,000 strains of bacteria, including some of the deadliest in the world, are now available to researchers as part of an ambitious project by the UK’s National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC), in partnership with the Wellcome Sanger Institute and PacBio. Plague, cholera, streptomyces, and 250 strains of E. coli, are among the reference genomes created, as well as all ‘type strains’ of the bacteria in the collection — the first strains that describe the species and are…