Conservation of streptococcal CRISPRs on human skin and saliva.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPRs) are utilized by bacteria to resist encounters with their viruses. Human body surfaces have numerous bacteria that harbor CRISPRs, and their content can provide clues as to the types and features of viruses they may have encountered.

Results

We investigated the conservation of CRISPR content from streptococci on skin and saliva of human subjects over 8-weeks to determine whether similarities existed in the CRISPR spacer profiles and whether CRISPR spacers were a stable component of each biogeographic site. Most of the CRISPR sequences identified were unique, but a small proportion of spacers from the skin and saliva of each subject matched spacers derived from previously sequenced loci of S. thermo

SUBMITTER: Robles-Sikisaka R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4063239 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature