information

Whoever comes in this website may find a hint

Phage therapy is influenced by:

Phage therapy is influenced by:

Country :
the epidemiological situation is different from country to country in terms of circulating bacteria and bacteriophages. Example: a lytic phages from Italy may be no active on the same bacteria (genus and species) isolated from another country and vice versa.
Chronolability
Mutation rate
Phenotypical delay
Phage cocktail
My point of view

From Wikipedia


If the target host* of a phage therapy treatment is not
an animal the term "
biocontrol" (as in phage-mediated biocontrol of bacteria) is usually employed, rather than "phage therapy".

"In silico"

From:"Genomics,Proteomics and Clinical Bacteriology", N.Woodford and Alan P.Johnson

Phrase that emphasizes the fact that many molecular biologists spend increasing amounts of their time in front of a computer screen, generating hypotheses that can subsequently be tested and (hopefully) confirmed in the laboratory.

Monday 28 July 2014

Mycobacterium ulcerans by "In Silico" analysis. Step 1


Go in HAMAP proteomes

select Mycobacterium ulcerans in the Proteome window and open the page.

The page shows:

Species: Mycobacterium ulcerans (strain Agy99)

Species code: MYCUA

Taxonomy
Bacteria; Actinobacteria; Actinobacteridae; Actinomycetales; Corynebacterineae; Mycobacteriaceae; Mycobacterium (TaxID: 362242) [NEWT/ NCBI]

Description

In 1948 the etiologic agent of the Bairnsdale ulcer in humans was discovered by a team of Australian researchers and was named Mycobacterium ulcerans. During the 1960s many cases were reported from the Buruli Country in Uganda and the disease became generally known as Buruli ulcer. The Buruli ulcer is a devastating necrotic disease of subcutaneous tissue and a single Buruli ulcer can cover more than 15% of a person's skin surface and contains huge numbers of extracellular bacteria. Despite their abundance and extensive tissue damage, there is no acute inflammatory response to the bacteria and the lesions are often painless. This pathology is attributed to mycolactone, a macrolide toxin. Impoverished rural communities of West and Central Africa are worst affected although the disease occurs in other parts of the world. Since 1989, the prevalence of Buruli ulcer has increased and now exceeds that of leprosy and, in some instances, tuberculosis. Outbreaks are sporadic and unpredictable. Although the epidemiology of Buruli ulcer is poorly understood, proximity to stagnant or slow-flowing watercourses is a recognized risk factor. M. ulcerans is associated with algae, therefore, snails and organisms that feed on algae could be passive hosts. It has been shown that M. ulcerans is able to multiply in the salivary glands of Naucoris cimicoides, a carnivorous water bug. Humans could become infected through contact with contaminated Naucorides. Mycobacterium ulcerans (strain Agy99) was isolated from an ulcerative lesion on the right elbow of a female patient from the Ga district of Ghana in 1999.


Its genome is made up of a 5.6 Mb chromosome and a 174,155-bp plasmid.


The chromosome contains 4160 CDS and 771 pseudogenes, it harbors two prophages, phiMU01 and phiMU02, 302 insertion sequence elements and multiple DNA deletions and rearrangements.


This indicates that M. ulcerans has recently evolved via lateral gene transfer and reductive evolution from the generalist, more rapid-growing environmental Mycobacterium marinum to become a niche-adapted specialist.


The virulence plasmid pMUM001 encodes 81 CDS. Six CDS code for proteins involved in mycolactone synthesis, among which, mlsA1 and mlsA2, two giant polyketide synthases (PKS) responsible for the synthesis of the mycolactone core, and mlsB which is responsible for the synthesis of the mycolactone side chain.


Properties:

Presence of flagella: No

Interaction: Animal pathogen in Mammalia

Number of membranes: 1

Number of inteins:0

Statistics: Number of MYCUA entries in the UniProt Knowledgebase: 4206 (320 in UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot + 3886 in UniProtKB/TrEMBL)


From this page select in the upper window: Swiss.Prot/TrEMBL and write Mycobacterium ulcerans , open and the list of genes is showing now.

In this page if you copy in Query window the name or the symbol of a gene: example mlsA1, the gene is showing now. If you open the specific code Q6MZA4
you obtain information on the relative protein.