OMICS OF "CORYNEBACTERIUM PSEUDOTUBERCULOSIS": OUR PATHOGENS WORKHORSE

Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis is a facultative intracellular pathogen and the causative agent of several infectious and contagious chronic diseases, including caseous lymphadenitis, ulcerative lymphangitis, mastitis, and edematous skin disease, in a broad spectrum of hosts. Also, C. pseudotuberculosis infections
pose a rising worldwide economic problem in ruminants. The complete genome sequences of 15 C. pseudotuberculosis strains isolated from different hosts and countries were comparatively analyzed in several
works from our group. In these works, using pan-genomics, genome plasticity and a novel subtractive genomics approach.  We identified: a clonal aspect of the strains that is different in each biovar; 16 pathogenicity islands that present specific patterns of deletion in each biovar, where the pili clusters of genes are only complete on biovar ovis; and, potential conserved common drug and vaccine targets of these strains along with other Corynebacterium, Mycobacterium and Nocardia (CMN) group of human pathogens considering goat, sheep, bovine, horse, and human as the most affected hosts. Two Corynebacterium-specific ( mscL and resB)
and one broad-spectrum ( rpmB ) novel targets were also identified. Six principal targets were subjected to virtual screening, and one compound was found to be potent enough to render two targets ( cdc and nrdL ). Finally, we present the software tools PIPS (Pathogenicity Island Prediction Software) and GIPSy (Genomic Island Prediction Software) that were used in those works and also PAGES (PAn-GEnome Software), which is under development in our working group.