Abstract
Cronobacter has caused numerous illnesses in neonates, infants, and children. Here we report the draft genome of Cronobacter sakazakii E899. Whole-genome sequence analysis of Cronobacter strains provides a tool for understanding the genomic regions specific to each individual species.
GENOME ANNOUNCEMENT
Cronobacter (formerly Enterobacter) sakazakii is a Gram-negative rod of the family Enterobacteriaceae. In recent years, this bacterium has been associated with illnesses in neonates, infants, and children (from 3 months to 4 years old) (1). The pathogen causes neonatal meningitis, bacteremia, necrotizing enterocolitis, and in some cases death. A variety of foods were identified as possible sources of Cronobacter contamination, and powdered infant formula has been linked to neonatal meningitis cases. In 2004, the World Health Organization and Food and Agricultural Organization issued a report on a meeting that addressed the concern of Cronobacter as a pathogen (6).
There are six species of Cronobacter: C. sakazakii, C. malonaticus, C. turicensis, C. muytjensii, C. dublinensis, and Cronobacter genomospecies 1. To date, the genome sequences of only one strain of C. sakazakii (ATCC BAA-894) (3) and one strain of Cronobacter turicensis (LMG 23827) (5) are available. The limited number of Cronobacter genome sequences makes it challenging to understand Cronobacter species and strain variability and subsequently develop rapid detection and subtyping techniques for the genus, as well as each individual species of Cronobacter. Here we announce the availability of the draft genome of another C. sakazakii strain, E899, a clinical strain from the United States.
Genomic DNA was isolated from an overnight culture of strain E899 using the DNeasy blood and tissue kit (Qiagen). The genome was sequenced using 454 Titanium pyrosequencing (Roche) according to the manufacturer's instructions at 20× coverage (4). Genomic sequence contigs for strain E899 were assembled using C. sakazakii ATCC BAA-894 (accession number AADR00000000) as a reference. Assemblies were performed using the Roche Newbler software version 2.3. The sequences were annotated using the NCBI Prokaryotic Genomes Automatic Annotation Pipeline (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/static/Pipeline.html) (2). Detailed analysis of a full comparison of the genomes of these strains and other available Cronobacter strains will be included in a future publication.
Nucleotide sequence accession number.
The draft genome sequence of strain E899 is available in GenBank under accession number AFMO00000000.
Acknowledgments
This project was supported by U.S. Food and Drug Administration Foods Program intramural funds.
We thank Steven Musser for his effort on this project.
REFERENCES
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