Assigning strains to bacterial species via the internet.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Methods for assigning strains to bacterial species are cumbersome and no longer fit for purpose. The concatenated sequences of multiple house-keeping genes have been shown to be able to define and circumscribe bacterial species as sequence clusters. The advantage of this approach (multilocus sequence analysis; MLSA) is that, for any group of related species, a strain database can be produced and combined with software that allows query strains to be assigned to species via the internet. As an exemplar of this approach, we have studied a group of species, the viridans streptococci, which are very difficult to assign to species using standard taxonomic procedures, and have developed a website that allows species assignment via the internet.

Results

Seven house-keepi

SUBMITTER: Bishop CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2636762 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature