Genomic characterization of the Bacillus cereus sensu lato species: Backdrop to the evolution of Bacillus anthracis

  1. Timothy D. Read1,2,3,13
  1. 1Department of Human Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA;
  2. 2Biological Defense Research Directorate, Naval Medical Research Center, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910, USA;
  3. 3Division of Infectious Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA;
  4. 4Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3TG, United Kingdom;
  5. 5454 Life Sciences, Inc., Branford, Connecticut 06405, USA

    1. ↵6 These authors contributed equally to this work.

    • ↵Present addresses: 7The Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA;

    • ↵8 KeyGene, Inc., Rockville, Maryland 20850, USA;

    • ↵9 Chemical and Biological Division, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC 20005, USA;

    • ↵10 Cell Biology and Metabolism Program, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA;

    • ↵11 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular & Cell Biology, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA;

    • ↵12 Roche Diagnostics Asia Pacific, Singapore, 168730.

    Abstract

    The key genes required for Bacillus anthracis to cause anthrax have been acquired recently by horizontal gene transfer. To understand the genetic background for the evolution of B. anthracis virulence, we obtained high-redundancy genome sequences of 45 strains of the Bacillus cereus sensu lato (s.l.) species that were chosen for their genetic diversity within the species based on the existing multilocus sequence typing scheme. From the resulting data, we called more than 324,000 new genes representing more than 12,333 new gene families for this group. The core genome size for the B. cereus s.l. group was ∼1750 genes, with another 2150 genes found in almost every genome constituting the extended core. There was a paucity of genes specific and conserved in any clade. We found no evidence of recent large-scale gene loss in B. anthracis or for unusual accumulation of nonsynonymous DNA substitutions in the chromosome; however, several B. cereus genomes isolated from soil and not previously associated with human disease were degraded to various degrees. Although B. anthracis has undergone an ecological shift within the species, its chromosome does not appear to be exceptional on a macroscopic scale compared with close relatives.

    Footnotes

    • ↵13 Corresponding author

      E-mail tread{at}emory.edu

    • [Supplemental material is available for this article.]

    • Article published online before print. Article, supplemental material, and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.134437.111.

      Freely available online through the Genome Research Open Access option.

    • Received November 6, 2011.
    • Accepted May 21, 2012.

    This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

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    1. Published in Advance May 29, 2012, doi: 10.1101/gr.134437.111 Genome Res. 22: 1512-1524 © 2012, Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

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