Shyh-Ching Lo, Guo-Chiuan Hung, Haiyan Lei, Tianwei Li, Philip Yang, Bingjie Li and Shien Tsai
Food and Drug Administration, USA
Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Mol Genet Med
We recently studied previously cryopreserved blood cultures of 3 patients with poorly defined illnesses using fresh SP4 broth media with new supplements and High Throughput Sequencing (HTS). No microbes could be isolated from these blood cultures in former microbiology workups. A novel bacterium Afipia septicemium was isolated from the previously cryopreserved blood cultures from two of the patients after a prolonged course of incubation. Further characterization of A. septicemium genome revealed the presence of a gene transfer agent cluster that could potentially contribute to its marked genomic plasticity. Using the re-initiated a blood culture of the third patient, our study identified a new microbe Bradyrhizobium sp. strain OHSU_III that grew slowly and could not continue to proliferate to high cell density in SP4 broth or form colonies on agar plates. Here, we describe the non-contiguous draft genome of Bradyrhizobium sp. OHSU_III, which consists of a 7.9 Mb circular chromosome with no identifiable autonomous plasmids. The functional annotation of the genome was carried out using RAST (Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology). Comparative analysis showed that Bradyrhizobium sp. OHSU_III and also B. enterica, a new Bradyrhizobium species recently identified in biopsies of patients with the cord colitis syndrome using HTS; do not carry nitrogen fixation and nodulation genes commonly found in symbiotic Bradyrhizobium species of bacteria, such as B. elkanii or B. japonicum. Both Bradyrhizobium sp. OHSU_III and B. enterica apparently possess ~100 genes that are not present in the genomes of the symbiotic Bradyrhizobium species. It is unclear if these genes play any role in Bradyrhizobium sp. OHSU_III and B. enterica�s abilities to persist in the human hosts. The genome sequencing and annotation study should facilitate the development of molecular assay for detecting new Bradyrhizobium sp. bacteria and understanding the role, if any, they might play in various disease processes.
Email: ShyhChing.Lo@fda.hhs.gov
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