Contribution of Gene Loss to the Pathogenic Evolution of <i>Burkholderia pseudomallei</i> and <i>Burkholderia mallei</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Burkholderia pseudomallei is the causative agent of melioidosis. Burkholderia thailandensis is a closely related species that can readily utilize l-arabinose as a sole carbon source, whereas B. pseudomallei cannot. We used Tn5-OT182 mutagenesis to isolate an arabinose-negative mutant of B. thailandensis. Sequence analysis of regions flanking the transposon insertion revealed the presence of an arabinose assimilation operon consisting of nine genes. Analysis of the B. pseudomallei chromosome showed a deletion of the operon from this organism. This deletion was detected in all B. pseudomallei and Burkholderia mallei strains investigated. We cloned the B. thailandensis E264 arabinose assimilation operon and introduced the entire operon into the chromosome of B. pseudomallei 406e via homologous recombination. The resultant strain, B. pseudomallei SZ5028, was able to utilize l-arabinose as a sole carbon source. Strain SZ5028 had a significantly higher 50% lethal dose for Syrian hamsters compared to the parent strain 406e. Microarray analysis revealed that a number of genes in a type III secretion system were down-regulated in strain SZ5028 when cells were grown in l-arabinose, suggesting a regulatory role for l-arabinose or a metabolite of l-arabinose. These results suggest that the ability to metabolize l-arabinose reduces the virulence of B. pseudomallei and that the genes encoding arabinose assimilation may be considered antivirulence genes. The increase in virulence associated with the loss of these genes may have provided a selective advantage for B. pseudomallei as these organisms adapted to survival in animal hosts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".