Staphylococcus pasteuri strain:65.1 Genome sequencing and assembly. Staphylococcus pasteuri strain:65.1

We demonstrate that enterotoxin genes may occur at highly variable copy numbers in coagulase-negative staphylococci. However, enterotoxin genes could be identified in whole-genome sequences of CoNS carrying them only at high copy numbers, and only those enterotoxins were expressed at the protein level. The enterotoxin genes appearing in CoNS isolates at low copy numbers may be a result of a transient transfer of the DNA containing enterotoxin genes from co-occurring enterotoxigenic CoNS or S. aureus. Our results indicate that PCR-based detection of enterotoxin genes in CoNS should always require additional control, like analysis of their presence in the bacterial genome, otherwise there is a risk of the detection of transient DNA from co-occurring enterotoxigenic staphylococcal isolates.