EXPLOITING Anaplasma marginale GENOME

MORETTA ROSALÍA; RUYBAL, P; PETRIGH R,; NUÑEZ P,; WILCOWSKY S; FARBER MD.

Petropolis, Río de Janeiro, Brasil

Conferencia; *Global Dialogues on Emerging Science and Technology (GDEST) Conference on Bioinformatics; 2006

Laboratorio Nacional de Computación Científica

The obligate intraerythrocytic bacterium Anaplasma marginale (Rickettsiales: Anaplasmataceae) is the most prevalent tick-borne livestock pathogen worldwide and is a severe constraint to animal health and production in tropic and subtropical regions of the world. Whole-genome sequencing of bacteria together with in silico analysis and different kinds of genomic approaches are powerful tools that allow prediction of genes that take part in microbial pathogenesis. Using the information that became available with the complete sequence of A. marginale, our study aimed at selecting approaches that led us to the identification of genes that code for putative virulence factors or immunogens and  non-coding tandem repeats regions that should be useful as genotyping tools. The selected methods were:- PhoA fusion system for identifying exported proteins;- PCR-based subtractive hybridization for detecting differential genes between two species;-Bioinformatics analysis. Eight gene products were studied so far. Among the selected genes, four are currently being evaluated to determine their antigenic potential and one of them is being characterized to elucidate its role as a virulence determinant.