A comparative analysis of short tandem repeats in PXO1 and PXO2 plasmids in the human and bovine isolates of Bacillus anthracis Suresh K.P., Beelagi M.S., Bharathi I. Uma, Madhumitha B., Gulati B.R., Patil S.S.* ICAR-National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics (NIVEDI), Yelahanka, Bengaluru-560064, Karnataka, India *Corresponding author E-mail id: sharanspin13@gmail.com
Online published on 7 March, 2023. Abstract The gram-positive Bacillus anthracis, causative agent of anthrax, is encapsulated, discretional anaerobic bacteria that produce toxins. Contact with infected animals or their products can lead to the human transmission of anthrax. In this study, the available sequences of pXO1 and pXO2 of human and bovine isolates were analyzed for the existence of mono-, di-, and tri-, short sequence repeats (SSRs). The genetic loci known as simple sequence repeats contain tandem base repetitions of varying lengths. SSRs enable both the genetic and phenotypic flexibility and have different roles in the regulation of gene expression. The SSRs of human and bovine isolates were identified with the R script and the primers were designed for both pXO1 and pXO2 of bovine and human isolates from the “WebSat” server. The mono-SSRs (T/A) were found to be higher in pXO2 compared to pXO1. The di-SSRs (TT/AA) of pXO1 were higher and (CG/GC) was found to have lower frequencies in both the plasmids. Whereas, the dinucleotide abundance frequencies of pXO1 and pXO2 were observed that CC and AA were overrepresented, respectively and CG and TA were underrepresented, respectively. The tri-SSRs were observed to have more variations when compared between pXO1 and pXO2. This suggests that assessment of gene function as well as epidemiological identifiers or markers can both benefit from understanding of the primary structure of tandem repeats with varying numbers. A precise analysis of SSR structure can provide information about how genes are regulated. Information on the functional and evolutionary factors of genetic variation between pXO1 and pXO2 of human and bovine isolates is provided by sequence repeat analysis in Bacillus anthracis. This method of mining and designing polymorphic SSR markers computationally and comparing the genome sequences of various accessions reduces time-consuming experimental evaluation. This method enhances the effectiveness of locating a significant number of novel polymorphic SSR markers. Top Keywords Bacillus anthracis, Short sequence repeats, PXO1, PXO2, Humans, Bovines, R. Top |