Burkholderia cenocepacia Genome sequencing and assembly

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common fatal genetic disorder in children and young adults in Canada. The primary cause of CF-related deaths is chronic microbial infection in the lungs of affected patients. In particular, bacterial pathogens from the Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) are a serious health concern for CF patients, because Bcc can establish persistent infections in the lungs and are highly resistant to antibiotics. Complicating the clinical picture is the fact that CF patients infected with the “same” Burkholderia strains, as identified by the lower-resolution genotyping methods, can have drastically different clinical outcomes. In this study, we sequenced over 200 clinical isolates of B. cenocepacia using Illumina paired-end and PacBio long-read sequencing. Our goal is to capture the genomic diversity and changes that are found in clinical B. cenocepacia isolates.