Comparative Genome Sequence Analysis Reveals the Extent of Diversity and Conservation for Glycan-Associated Proteins in Burkholderia spp.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Comparative and Functional Genomics Volume 2012, Article ID 752867, 15 pages doi:10.1155/2012/752867 Research Article Comparative Genome Sequence Analysis Reveals the Extent of Diversity and Conservation for Glycan-Associated Proteins in Burkholderia spp. Hui San Ong, Rahmah Mohamed, and Mohd Firdaus-Raih School of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Malaysia Correspondence should be addressed to Mohd Firdaus-Raih, firdaus@ Received 22 February 2012; Accepted 11 June 2012 Academic Editor: H. Heng Copyright © 2012 Hui San Ong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Members of the Burkholderia family occupy diverse ecological niches. In pathogenic family members, glycan-associated proteins are often linked to functions that include virulence, protein conformation maintenance, surface recognition, cell adhesion, and immune system evasion. Comparative analysis of available Burkholderia genomes has revealed a core set of 178 glycan-associated proteins shared by all Burkholderia of which 68 are homologous to known essential genes. The genome sequence comparisons revealed insights into species-specific gene acquisitions through gene transfers, identified an S-layer protein, and proposed that significantly reactive surface proteins are associated to sugar moieties as a potential means to circumvent host defense mechanisms. The comparative analysis using a curated database of search queries enabled us to gain insights into the extent of conservation and diversity, as well as the possible virulence-as