Two Meningitis Bacteria Yield Genomes
By John Travis
In many people, Neisseria meningitidis resides quietly in the nose or throat, doing no harm. In others, the bacterium invades and inflames the tissue that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, causing meningitis, a disease fatal in about 10 percent of cases.
This week at the Fourth Annual Conference on Microbial Genomes in Chantilly, Va., researchers announced that they have sequenced all the genes of two common strains of the microbe. Those genome data have already helped the scientists identify bacterial proteins that may lead to a much-needed vaccine for one of those strains.