A computational approach for identifying pathogenicity islands in prokaryotic genomes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Pathogenicity islands (PAIs), distinct genomic segments of pathogens encoding virulence factors, represent a subgroup of genomic islands (GIs) that have been acquired by horizontal gene transfer event. Up to now, computational approaches for identifying PAIs have been focused on the detection of genomic regions which only differ from the rest of the genome in their base composition and codon usage. These approaches often lead to the identification of genomic islands, rather than PAIs.

Results

We present a computational method for detecting potential PAIs in complete prokaryotic genomes by combining sequence similarities and abnormalities in genomic composition. We first collected 207 GenBank accessions containing either part or all of the reported PAI loci. In seq

SUBMITTER: Yoon SH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1188055 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature