House Finch-associated Mycoplasma gallisepticum
Since 1994, M. gallisepticum infection has emerged and spread across the continental U.S. in the House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus), a songbird that represents a novel, wild reservoir host for M. gallisepticum. This novel wildlife disease has been monitored through public survey at Cornell University. With funding provided by the National Science Foundation and the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extention Service, we completed a genome sequencing project to examine index and seven intermediate isolates from this epizootic, with the intent of providing comprehensive and comparative genomic data with which to study evolution of M. gallisepticum as it adapts to a new host and in new environments. In doing so, we identifed specific candidate genes undergoing selective pressure and perhaps responsible for changes in pathogenicity, and characterized larger-scale variation in loci containing genes belonging to the large paralogous family of phase variable lipoprotein hemagglutinins (vlhA) (Tulman et. al., 2012). These data are currently being extended in a collaborative project funded by National Institutes of Health and with investigators at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Cornell University, North Carolina State University, Princeton University, and University of New England, where genomic and transcriptomic data is being used to complement pathogen/host disease modeling data to elucidate mechanisms affecting spread and severity disease caused by an emerging pathogen.
House finch-associated Mycoplasma gallisepticum genome sequences
* Requests for data may be made to steven.geary@uconn.edu and should include intended use. Permission should be obtained before publishing any work containing the unpublished sequence data or analyses of unpublished sequence data above, and sequence data should be neither published nor disseminated without acknowledgment. Data provided will be latest available unfinished contig sequences, with no guarantee as to their accuracy.