Optical Maps and Yersinia
Genomes
The
Yersinia
genus of bacteria is most famous for including
Yersinia pesits the
causative agent of the
bubonic
plague, but it also includes other
pathogenic bacteria such as
Y.
pseudotuberculosis and
Y.
enterocolictica that cause gastroentestinal problems
in humans. In fact several close relatives of these harmful bacteria
are all around us - in the water, soil and food around us and yet they
seem to be relatively harmless. In order to understand the genomic
elements that differentiate these bacteria and to get a more complete
picture of this genus, our collaborators at the Naval Medical Research
Center sequenced several
Yersinia
genomes using 454 Sequencing technology. We recently assembled
and scaffolded 8 of these genomes by taking advantage of
optical mapping technology
and the
SOMA
package (
Nagarajan
et al., 2008) (see also:
Genome Assembly).
My current work involves studying the Repeatome of these organisms to identify the role
they play in shaping these genomes.
