Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum strain:Amoy Genome sequencing. Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum strain:Amoy

Syphilis spirochete Treponema pallidum ssp. pallidum (T. pallidum) remains the enigmatic pathogen and cause a globally sexually transmitted disease, since little pathogenesis of the disease is poorly understood. In 1998, the first complete genome sequence of T. pallidum (Nichols strain) was completed which provide a valuable source for identification of treponemal virulence factors, targets for molecular typing, and candidates for potential vaccine development. Subsequently, several T. pallidum whole genome sequence were finished, but those study revealed that genome differences between individual strains are minimal. However, it's should be noted these complete genome sequences of T. pallidum were all from American, such as Nichols (U.S. Navy, 1912), Chicago (U.S. Chicago, 1951), Mexcio A ((U.S. Mexcio, 1953), SS14 (U.S. Atlanta, 1976), Sea 81-4 (U.S. Seattle, 1980), and DAL-1 (African American woman, 1991). In fact, some scholars have indicated that the T. pallidum in different area of different countries was various in genotypes, so as to lead to differing in pathogenicity. Up to now, there was no research on the genome sequence of T. pallidum stain from other area, let alone from Asian or China. The Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum strain Amoy, first isolated in Xiamen (also call Amoy) in 2011 from a patient with primary syphilis, has not been continually passed in rabbits. So it keeps the fundamental aspects of the pathogenesis of syphilis in recent area, such as molecular genetic evolution, antigenic variation, immune escape, and persistence of the pathogen in host. In addition, we found the inoculation time that treponemes were harvested from infected rabbit testes at peak orchitis was different among China A strain (average 18 days) compared to other T. pallidum strains, and the Chinese A strain has a relatively low toxicity than Nichols and Chicago strain, which revealed a likely genetic differences between these strains. So, we sequenced and annotated the China A strain genome for comparative studies to determine variation between Chinese strains and other syphilis isolates, how the genetic differences between different syphilis isolates caused different diseases results.