Sequencing

11th Annual Sequencing, Finishing, and Analysis in the Future Meeting
COMPARISON OF 12 FRANCISELLA TULARENSIS
WHOLE GENOMES FROM THE COUNTRY OF
GEORGIA
Wednesday, 1st June 18:30 La Fonda NM Room (1st floor) Poster (PS‐1a.02)
Gvantsa Chanturia 1 , Giorgi Dzavashvili 1 , Jason Farlow 2
1 National Center for Disease Control and Public Health, Georgia
, 2 Farlow Scientific Consulting Company, LLC
The select agent Francisella tularensis is widely spread in the eastern part of Georgia. The National
Center for Disease Control and Public Health of Georgia (NCDC) performs active surveillance of
this pathogen by seasonal field sampling of vectors and amplifiers at two main foci. A collection
of more than one hundred strains of F. tularensis currently exists at the NCDC‐ Lugar Center for
Public Health Research.
The SNP and MLVA genotyping of archival strains was performed in the scope of previous studies in
collaboration with Northern Arizona University (NAU) and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
(WRAIR). Whole genome SNP comparison of one F. tularensis strain from the NCDC collection and
another F. tularensis reference genome revealed the Georgian strain as basal for most of the European
clades. Country‐specific SNPs were discovered and used for typing and phylogenetic analysis of the
rest of the strains.
Twelve F. tularensis strains from the NCDC collection were selected for whole genome sequencing
at WRAIR and Lugar Center using next generation sequencing platfor Bioinformatics tools available
at the Lugar Center including CLC‐Bio and EDGE were used for data processing and phylogenetic
analysis. The F. tularensis SCHU S4 and Live Vaccine Strain (LVS) genomes were used for reference
read mapping analyses. Close relatives to the Georgian clade reference strains were added from the
NCBI database for phylogenetic analysis.
Phylogenetic analyses based on new SNPs and InDels among Georgian F. tularensis strains placed
these isolates in separate branches that were not previously observed after PCR‐based SNP typing.
Whole‐genome‐based SNP analysis allowed the discovery of new diversity patterns inside the
previously‐established canonical SNP lineage (B.Br.013).
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