Using SNPs to Discriminate Disease Associated from Carried Genomes of Neisseria meningitidis

Neisseria meningitidis is one of the main agents of bacterial meningitis causing substantial morbidity and mortality worldwide. However, most of the time N. meningitidis is carried as a commensal not associated with invasive disease. The genomic basis of the difference between disease associated versus carried isolates of N. meningitidis may provide critical insight into mechanisms of virulence, yet it has remained elusive. Here, we have taken a comparative genomics approach to interrogate the difference between disease associated and carried isolates of N. meningitidis at the level of individual nucleotide variations (i.e., SNPs). We aligned complete genome sequences of N. meningitidis to search for SNPs that show mutually exclusive patterns of variation between the two groups.