PubMedCrossRef 35. Guindon S, Gascuel O: Efficient biased estimation of evolutionary distances when substitution rates vary across sites. Mol Biol Evol 2002, 4:534–543. 36. Hasegawa M, Kishino H, Yano T: Dating the human-ape splitting by a molecular clock of mitochondrial DNA. J Mol Evol

1985, 22:160–174.PubMedCrossRef 37. Chevenet F, Brun C, Banuls AL, Jacq B, Chisten R: TreeDyn: towards dynamic graphics and annotations for analyses of trees. BMC Bioinformatics 2006, 7:439.PubMedCrossRef 38. Piñero D, Martinez E, Selander RK: Genetic diversity and relationships among isolates of Rhizobium leguminosarum biovar phaseoli www.selleckchem.com/products/LY294002.html . Appl Environ Microbiol 1988, 54:2825–2832.PubMed 39. Simon R: High frequency mobilization of gram-negative bacterial replicons by the in vitro constructed Tn 5 -mob transposon. Mol Gen Genet 1984, 196:413–420.PubMedCrossRef 40. Jones JDG, Gutterson N: An efficient mobilizable cosmid vector, pRK7813, and its use in a rapid method for marker exchange in Pseudomonas fluorescens strain HV37a. Gene 1987, 61:299–306.PubMedCrossRef

41. Kovach ME, Elzer PH, Hill DS, Robertson GT, Farris MA, Roop RM II, Peterson KM: Four new derivatives of the broad-host-range cloning vector pBBR1MCS, carrying different antibiotic-resistance click here cassettes. Gene 1995, 166:175–176.PubMedCrossRef Authors’ contributions TV designed and constructed all the mutants, did all the experiments for genetic complementation of the mutants, performed growth experiments and Southern blot hybridizations and helped to draft the manuscript. SB provided intellectual guidance and contributed to writing the manuscript. AD performed Eckhardt gels and Southern blot to localize panCB homologues in plasmids of R. etli strains and assisted in DNA cloning. LL carried out the phylogenetic analysis and the discussion of results. DR participated

in the experimental design and in the discussion of results. AGS conceived the study, supervised the experimental work and wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background very We sequenced the genome of a strain (MGAS6180) of serotype M28 group A Streptococcus [1], a human-specific pathogen that is non-randomly associated with neonatal female urogenital infections [2]. The genome of strain MGAS6180 has a novel 37-kb element designated RD2 (Region of Difference 2) [1]. RD2 is one of seven elements integrated into the chromosome of this strain (4 phages, 3 ICE and ICE related elements) [1, 3]. Subsequently we demonstrated that all serotype M28 strains studied contained RD2 integrated at the same chromosomal site [1, 3]. RD2 encodes seven secreted extracellular proteins that are expressed in human infections. One of these proteins (M28_Spy1336) is also known as the R28 protein, and has been previously studied in GAS and group B Streptococcus (GBS) [4–7]. The R28 protein has been implicated in virulence based on its ability to mediate binding of GBS to human vaginal epithelial cells [6].