- Genomics of megaplasmids in the Bacillus cereus group The large (70 to 400 kb) plasmids of the Bacillus cereus sensu... moreGenomics of megaplasmids in the Bacillus cereus group
The large (70 to 400 kb) plasmids of the Bacillus cereus sensu lato species complex tend to encode key phenotypic determinants that are linked to species or ecotype determination within the group, mainly in relation to the pathogenic properties and virulence spectra of their bacterial hosts. This mainly concerns two families of large plasmids that share common backbones, respectively named pXO1-like and pXO2-like after their most notorious members, the anthrax virulence plasmids pXO1 and pXO2 from B. anthracis. We have undertaken the whole genome sequencing of 96 environmental isolates of B. cereus s.l. containing pXO1-like and/or pXO2-like plasmids in order to study the sequence conservation of the plasmid backbones, their functional modularity and the diversity of their “passenger” genes, as well as the phylogenomic relationships between the plasmids and the chromosome of their respective bacterial hosts.edit
