title: Contribution of phage-derived genomic islands to the virulence of facultative bacterial pathogens.
abstract: Facultative pathogens have extremely dynamic pan-genomes, to a large extent derived from bacteriophages and other mobile elements. We developed a simple approach to identify phage-derived genomic islands and apply it to show that pathogens from diverse bacterial genera are significantly enriched in clustered phage-derived genes compared with related benign strains. These findings show that genome expansion by integration of prophages containing virulence factors is a major route of evolution of facultative bacterial pathogens.
authors.affiliation: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA. ben.busby@nih.gov
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Busby
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Kristensen
authors.forename: Eugene V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Koonin
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D005075:Biological Evolution; D016680:Genome, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics*; D044404:Genomic Islands / Q000235:genetics*; D039002:Prophages / Q000235:genetics*; D014774:Virulence / Q000235:genetics*; D037521:Virulence Factors / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D037521:Virulence Factors