Whole-Genome Comparative Analysis of Malaysian Burkholderia pseudomallei Clinical Isolates. Burkolderia pseudomallei genome analysis

The virulence of four Malaysian Burkholderia pseudomallei clinical isolates (UKMR15, UKMPMC2000, UKMD286 and UKMH10) was assessed using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans infection assay. From the analysis, the isolates were classified into high- and low-virulence isolates and this led us to propose that the difference in virulence can be attributed to differences in the isolates’ genome content. Genomic DNA was extracted from all isolates and sequenced on the PacBio platform (200-fold coverage). The sequencing reads were assembled using HGAP2.0 and gene prediction on the assembled genomes was performed using an ab initio gene predictor based on the B. pseudomallei K96243 annotation. The assembled and annotated genomes were then subjected to whole genome comparative analysis to identify genes that may encode for B. pseudomallei virulence factors.