A comparison of virulence encoding genes between strains NMB-CDC and MC58.

*Gene designations as assigned to strain MC58 are NMBXXXX [111]. NMCXXXX designations for open reading frames found in strain FAM18 but absent in strain MC58 are used where appropriate [112].
**The potential for phase variation was determined by the length of the homopolymeric (>5 bp) or pentameric tracts (>5 copies) within these genes.
+Strain MC58 has the following alleles: allele 96 (OpaA), allele 288 (OpaB), allele 147 (OpaD), allele 218 (OpaJ). The Opa loci from strain NMB-CDC were amplified and sequenced (see Methods) and were determined to be: allele 246 (OpaA), allele 277 (OpaB), allele 161 (OpaD) and allele 257 (OpaJ). This is the typical allelic pattern for ST-8 cc isolates [102].
++Opc and PilC2 were absent from the sequenced genome of strain NMB-CDC and this was confirmed by PCR (see methods) [21].
+++The sequence and expression profile of the pilin loci and glycosylation status of strain NMB-CDC has been published previously [34], [111]. (I) denotes Class I and (II) denotes Class II pilin expression [47].
++++The allele designations of NadA are described in Comanducci et al. [109].