Protein abundances can distinguish between naturally-occurring and laboratory strains of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague.

ABSTRACT: The rapid pace of bacterial evolution enables organisms to adapt to the laboratory environment with repeated passage and thus diverge from naturally-occurring environmental ("wild") strains. Distinguishing wild and laboratory strains is clearly important for biodefense and bioforensics; however, DNA sequence data alone has thus far not provided a clear signature, perhaps due to lack of understanding of how diverse genome changes lead to convergent phenotypes, difficulty in detecting certain types of mutations, or perhaps because some adaptive modifications are epigenetic. Monitoring protein abundance, a molecular measure of phenotype, can overcome some of these difficulties. We have assembled a collection of Yersinia pestis proteomics datasets from our own published and unpublished work, a

SUBMITTER: Merkley ED 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5576697 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature