Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 6, 2026

An Allelotyping PCR for Identifying Salmonella enterica serovars Enteritidis, Hadar, Heidelberg, and Typhimurium
Published on: July 22, 2011
Phylogenomic analysis identifies gene gains that define Salmonella enterica subspecies I
E Kurt Lienau1, Jeffrey M Blazar, Charles Wang
1Office of the Center Director, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration, College Park, Maryland, United States of America ; Evolution Industries LLC, Frederick, Maryland, United States of America.
Abstract:
Comparative methods for analyzing whole genome sequence (WGS) data enable us to assess the genetic information available for reconstructing the evolutionary history of pathogens. We used the comparative approach to determine diagnostic genes for Salmonella enterica subspecies I. S. enterica subsp. I strains are known to infect warm-blooded organisms regularly while its close relatives tend to infect only cold-blooded organisms. We found 71 genes gained by the common ancestor of Salmonella enterica subspecies I and not subsequently lost by any member of this subspecies sequenced to date. These genes included many putative functional phenotypes. Twenty-seven of these genes are found only in Salmonella enterica subspecies I; we designed primers to test these genes for use as diagnostic sequence targets and data mined the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database for draft genomes which carried these genes. We found that the sequence specificity and variability of these amplicons can be used to detect and discriminate among 317 different serovars and strains of Salmonella enterica subspecies I.
Related Concept Videos
Evolution of Microbial Genome
Modern Molecular Taxonomy
Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?
In contrast, regions which code...
Genome Size and the Evolution of New Genes
Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons

