A Bacillus thuringiensis strain producing a polyglutamate capsule resembling that of Bacillus anthracis

Elise Cachat, Margaret Barker, Timothy D. Read, Fergus G. Priest

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    29 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Bacillus thuringiensis serovar Monterrey strain BGSC 4AJ1 produced a microscopically visible capsule that reacted with a fluorescent antibody specific for the poly-?-d-glutamic acid (PGA) capsule of Bacillus anthracis. PGA capsule biosynthesis genes with 75%, 81%, 72%, 65% and 63% similarity, respectively, to those of the B. anthracis capBCADE cluster were present on a plasmid (pAJ1-1). Strain BGSC 4AJ1, together with five strains of Bacillus cereus that hybridized to a PGA cap gene probe, were analyzed phylogenetically using six housekeeping genes of a B. cereus multilocus sequence typing scheme. Bacillus thuringiensis BGSC 4AJ1 shared four identical alleles with B. anthracis and was the second most closely related to this bacterium of the 674 isolates in the multilocus sequence typing database. The other cap + strains were distributed among various lineages of Clade 1 of the B. cereus group. © 2008 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)220-226
    Number of pages7
    JournalFEMS Microbiology Letters
    Volume285
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Aug 2008

    Keywords

    • Bacillus anthracis
    • Bacillus cereus
    • Bacillus thuringiensis
    • Capsule
    • MLST
    • Polyglutamic acid

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