Abstract
The main pathogenic factor of Bacillus anthracis is a three-component toxin encoded by the pagA, lef, and cya genes, which are located on the pXO1 plasmid. The atxA gene, which encodes the primary regulator of pathogenicity factor expression, is located on the same plasmid. In this work, we evaluated the polymorphism of the pagA, lef, cya, and atxA genes for 85 B. anthracis strains from different evolutionary lineages and canSNP groups. We have found a strong correlation of 19 genotypes with the main evolutionary lineages, but the correlation with the canSNP group of the strain was not as strong. We have detected several genetic markers indicating the geographical origin of the strains, for example, their source from the steppe zone of the former USSR. We also found that strains of the B.Br.001/002 group caused an anthrax epidemic in Russia in 2016 and strains isolated during paleontological excavations in the Russian Arctic have the same genotype as the strains of the B.Br.CNEVA group circulating in Central Europe. This data could testify in favor of the genetic relationship of these two groups of strains and hypothesize the ways of distribution of their ancestral forms between Europe and the Arctic.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
That is, whether the nucleotide substitution in each identified position is synonymous, leads to an amino acid substitution of the corresponding protein, or leads to its inactivation due to the appearance of a stop codon—we performed the in silico translation of nucleotide sequences into amino acid sequences
The coordinates of amino acid substitutions are indicated for the complete sequence of translated proteins, excluding their post-translational modification, which consisted of the cleavage of the N-terminal signal sequence
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Anthrax is a dangerous infection caused by the spore-forming Grampositive bacterium Bacillus anthracis [1]. The main feature of the systematic position of
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