Project description:Bacillus cereus is the second leading cause of collective food poisoning in France. B. cereus is also associated with severe clinical infections leading to patient death in 10% of the cases. The emergence of B. cereus as a foodborne and opportunistic pathogen has intensified the need to distinguish strains of public health concern. In this work, by performing a screen on a large collection of B. cereus strains of varying pathogenic potential, we identified genetic determinants capable of discriminating B. cereus strains inducing negative clinical outcomes. The combination of 4 biomarkers is sufficient to accurately discern clinical strains from harmless strains. Three of the biomarkers are located on the chromosome, with a fourth one identifying a plasmid carried by most pathogenic strains. A 50 kbp region of this plasmid promotes the virulence potential of these strains and could thus be defined as a new pathogenicity island of B. cereus. These new findings help in the understanding of B. cereus pathogenic potential and complexity and may provide tools for a better assessment of the risks associated with B. cereus contamination to improve patient health and food safety.
Project description:We installed and optimized a genetic tool that allows control over protein stability in a model cyanobacterium. This tool has potential uses for the fundamental study of cyanobacterial genes, and may be useful for the design of more sophisticated, bioindustrial cyanobacterial strains.
Project description:Metabolomics data from 3 strains in the NBC collection that carry a Pekiskomycin BGC.
The strains were grown in R5 media and represent a WT strain, strain with a StrR regulator or LmbU regulator heterologously expressed to activate the cluster.
Streptomyces sp. NBC_00654 (NCBI:txid2975799)
Streptomyces sp. NBC_00878 (NCBI:txid2975854)