Bacillus Facts
Bacillus anthracis is an endospore-forming, Gram-positive rod-shaped bacterium. Within the genus Bacillus, B. anthracis belongs to the Bacillus cereus group, which includes the pathogens B. cereus and B. thuringiensis. B. anthracis has many characteristics of a soil bacterium, and is considered to have evolved from a B. cereus type ancestor through acquisition of plasmid-encoded virulence factors.
Long regarded as the preferred biological warfare agent, Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax. Its potential for use as a bioweapon was infamously demonstrated by the autumn 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the U.S.
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Available Bacillus Genomes
Click on the organism of interest for a list of the genomes available.
Bolded organisms imply new genomes were added recently.
Bacillus Strain & DNA Availability
Get information on how to obtain
Bacillus bacteria, DNA, antibodies and antigens through the NIAID funded
BEI Resources.
Genome Annotation at JCVI
The Pathema-
Bacillus resource provides updated gene model and functional curation following standardized protocols for all publicly available
Bacillus genomes.
Community Annotation
Community members are encouraged to participate in our annotation effort by registering and submitting updates from individual gene pages. Sign up using the link below to register for community annotation.
Bacillus Gene Search
Highlighted Gene Tools & Lists
Bacillus Virulence
Bacillus anthracis produces a number of virulence factors that promote host pathogenesis. They are generally responsible for host adhesion, host invasion and colonization, and evasion of host defense mechanisms. Plasmid pXO1 encodes the major toxin genes specific to Bacillus anthracis: lef and cya express the secreted proteins lethal factor and edema factor which are delivered into host cells by a third plasmid-encoded protein, protective antigen. Lethal factor and edema factor are enzymes which modulate host signal transduction pathways to impair the host immune response and facilitate pathogenesis.
Biosafety Protocols
Virulence Factors
Below you can display a list of curated known and potential virulence factors, or BLAST
Bacillus genome sequences against the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Virulence Database.
JCVI Curated Virulence Factors
Compare Genomes
The Pathema-
Bacillus resource offers several whole-genome and multi-genome comparative tools to help identify regions and proteins of interest. Homologous protein results are pre-computed using blastp and can be viewed using a number of our homology tools under the Comparative Tools menu. Sequence alignment of specific molecules can be obtained using MUMmer.
Other Analysis
Protein ortholog clusters
Precomputed protein ortholog clusters (based on the blastp results) support a number of additional gene and genome-level reports and graphical displays, including those listed below. Each protein cluster is also displayed on a cluster report page like
this one.
Compare Genes
The Pathema-
Bacillus resource provides pre-computed blastp results for each protein against every other protein in the database. Detailed results can be obtained via the individual gene pages' Protein vs. All Alignment link. ClustalW and BER alignments are also acccesible from this gene page tool.
Functional Genomics
Functional genomics attempts to make use of the vast wealth of data produced by genomic projects to describe gene and protein functions and interactions. Functional genomics focuses on dynamic aspects such as gene transcription, translation, and protein-protein interactions, as opposed to the static aspects of the genomic information such as DNA sequence or structures. Below we list the current tools available for functional genomics studies of Bacillus.
Bacillus Microarrays
Genome Properties
Genome Properties consists of a suite of "Properties" which are defined attributes of prokaryotic organisms including presence/absence of metabolic pathways and characteristics of a genome such as "human pathogen". These properties are evaluated by manual curation or computer algorithms.
KEGG Pathways
KEGG Pathways are manually drawn pathway maps representing the molecular interaction and reaction networks for metabolism, other cellular processes, and human diseases.
SRI Pathway Tools
The Pathway Tools software is a bioinformatics software system for pathway analysis of genomes, and for creating Pathway/Genome Databases (PGDBs). A PGDB, such as
EcoCyc, is a bioinformatics DB that integrates genomic data with detailed functional annotations of the genome, such as descriptions of metabolic and signaling pathways. Pathway Tools was developed by
Peter D. Karp and coworkers at the
Bioinformatics Research Group at SRI International.
