American Foulbrood disease agent, Paenibacillus larvae, genomic variability in Europe

Paenibacillus larvae is the causative agent of the fatal American Foulbrood (AFB) disease responsible for decimating honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies. To study for the first time the variability and the geographic distribution of the most common P. larvae isolates in Europe; the laboratory of ANSES, Sophia Antipolis (France), as the European Union Reference Laboratory (EURL) for honey bee health, has created a bacterial stock-culture collection with isolates sampled from the European National Reference Laboratories (NRLs) spanning multiple years. The present study aims to characterize the variability between these different isolates in order to continue building the most reliable diagnostic tools available for the monitoring of this pathogen