title: Prediction of genomic islands  in seven human pathogens using the Z-Island method.
abstract: We  adopted the method of Zhang and Zhang (the Z-Island method) to identify genomic  islands in seven human pathogens, analyzing their chromosomal DNA sequences.  The Z-Island method is a theoretical method for predicting genomic islands in  bacterial genomes; it consists of determination of the cumulative GC profile  and computation of codon usage bias. Thirty-one genomic islands were found in  seven pathogens using this method. Further analysis demonstrated that most have  the known conserved features; this increases the probability that they are real  genomic islands. Eleven genomic islands were found to code for products  involved in causing disease (virulence factors) or in resistance to antibiotics  (resistance factors). This finding could be useful for research on the  pathogenicity of these bacteria and helpful in the treatment of the diseases  that they cause. In a comparison of the distribution of mobility elements in  genomic islands predicted by different methods, the Z-Island method gave lower  false-positive rates. The Z-Island method was found to detect more known  genomic islands than the two methods that we compared it with, SIGI-HMM and  IslandPick. Furthermore, it maintained a better balance between specificity and  sensitivity. The only inconvenience is that the steps for finding genomic  islands by the Z-Island method are semi-automatic.
authors: School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
authors: W
authors: W
authors: Wei
authors: F-B
authors: FB
authors: Guo
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics / Q000472:pathogenicity; D001424:Bacterial Infections / Q000235:genetics*; D002876:Chromosomes, Bacterial; D044404:Genomic Islands; D006801:Humans; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*; D037521:Virulence Factors / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D037521:Virulence Factors