Tropheryma whipplei
Classification
Higher order taxa
Cellular Organisms; Bacteria; Actinobacteria; Actinobacteria (class); Actinobacteridae; Actinomycetales; Micrococcineae; Cellulomonadaceae; Tropheryma; Tropheryma Whipplei
Genus
Italic text
Genus: Tropheryma Species: Whipplei
NCBI: Taxonomy |
Description and significance
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Genome structure
Troperyma Whipplei is the only reduced genome species, being less than 1Mb within the Actinobacteria. Though this human pathogen is small, it has a sequence of 927, 303 bp and is a circular genome. It encodes 808 predicted protein-coding genes. It has several specific genome features including: deficiencies in amino acid metabolism; a mutation in DNA gyrase, which leads to the potential resistance to quinolone antibiotics; lacks a clear thioredoxin and thioredoxin reductase homologs. A large chromosomal inversion was discovered when two available Tropheryma Whipplei genome sequences were aligned. The extremeties are located within two paralogous genes, which belong to a large cell-surface protein family defined by the presence of a common repeat highly conserved at the nucleotide level. It is these repeats that seem to spark a rearrangements in the Trophermya Whipplei. This, in turn, causes a varying expression of cell surface proteins, and thereby may be a new mechanism it uses to evade host defenses.
Cell structure and metabolism
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Ecology
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Pathology
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Application to Biotechnology
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Current Research
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References
Edited by student of Rachel Larsen and Kit Pogliano