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Background: Listeria consists of both pathogenic and non-pathogenic species. Reports of similarities between the genomic content between some pathogenic and non-pathogenic species necessitates the investigation of these species at the genomic level to understand the evolution of virulence-associated genes. With Listeria genome data growing exponentially, comparative genomic analysis may give better insights into evolution, genetics and phylogeny of Listeria spp., leading to better management of the diseases caused by them., Description: With this motivation, we have developed ListeriaBase, a web Listeria genomic resource and analysis platform to facilitate comparative analysis of Listeria spp. ListeriaBase currently houses 850,402 protein-coding genes, 18,113 RNAs and 15,576 tRNAs from 285 genome sequences of different Listeria strains. An AJAX-based real time search system implemented in ListeriaBase facilitates searching of this huge genomic data. Our in-house designed comparative analysis tools such as Pairwise Genome Comparison (PGC) tool allowing comparison between two genomes, Pathogenomics Profiling Tool (PathoProT) for comparing the virulence genes, and ListeriaTree for phylogenic classification, were customized and incorporated in ListeriaBase facilitating comparative genomic analysis of Listeria spp. Interestingly, we identified a unique genomic feature in the L. monocytogenes genomes in our analysis. The Auto protein sequences of the serotype 4 and the non-serotype 4 strains of L. monocytogenes possessed unique sequence signatures that can differentiate the two groups. We propose that the aut gene may be a potential gene marker for differentiating the serotype 4 strains from other serotypes of L. monocytogenes., Conclusions: ListeriaBase is a useful resource and analysis platform that can facilitate comparative analysis of Listeria for the scientific communities. We have successfully demonstrated some key utilities of ListeriaBase. The knowledge that we obtained in the analyses of L. monocytogenes may be important for functional works of this human pathogen in future. ListeriaBase is currently available at http://listeria.um.edu.my .

Background: Helicobacter is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria, possessing a characteristic helical shape that has been associated with a wide spectrum of human diseases. Although much research has been done on Helicobacter and many genomes have been sequenced, currently there is no specialized Helicobacter genomic resource and analysis platform to facilitate analysis of these genomes. With the increasing number of Helicobacter genomes being sequenced, comparative genomic analysis on members of this species will provide further insights on their taxonomy, phylogeny, pathogenicity and other information that may contribute to better management of diseases caused by Helicobacter pathogens., Description: To facilitate the ongoing research on Helicobacter, a specialized central repository and analysis platform for the Helicobacter research community is needed to host the fast-growing amount of genomic data and facilitate the analysis of these data, particularly comparative analysis. Here we present HelicoBase, a user-friendly Helicobacter resource platform with diverse functionality for the analysis of Helicobacter genomic data for the Helicobacter research communities. HelicoBase hosts a total of 13 species and 166 genome sequences of Helicobacter spp. Genome annotations such as gene/protein sequences, protein function and sub-cellular localisation are also included. Our web implementation supports diverse query types and seamless searching of annotations using an AJAX-based real-time searching system. JBrowse is also incorporated to allow rapid and seamless browsing of Helicobacter genomes and annotations. Advanced bioinformatics analysis tools consisting of standard BLAST for similarity search, VFDB BLAST for sequence similarity search against the Virulence Factor Database (VFDB), Pairwise Genome Comparison (PGC) tool for comparative genomic analysis, and a newly designed Pathogenomics Profiling Tool (PathoProT) for comparative pathogenomic analysis are also included to facilitate the analysis of Helicobacter genomic data., Conclusions: HelicoBase offers access to a range of genomic resources as well as tools for the analysis of Helicobacter genome data. HelicoBase can be accessed at http://helicobacter.um.edu.my.

Background: Comparative genomics is a formidable tool to identify functional elements throughout a genome. In the past ten years, studies in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and a set of closely related species have been instrumental in showing the benefit of analyzing patterns of sequence conservation. Increasing the number of closely related genome sequences makes the comparative genomics approach more powerful and accurate., Results: Here, we report the genome sequence and analysis of Saccharomyces arboricolus, a yeast species recently isolated in China, that is closely related to S. cerevisiae. We obtained high quality de novo sequence and assemblies using a combination of next generation sequencing technologies, established the phylogenetic position of this species and considered its phenotypic profile under multiple environmental conditions in the light of its gene content and phylogeny., Conclusions: We suggest that the genome of S. arboricolus will be useful in future comparative genomics analysis of the Saccharomyces sensu stricto yeasts.