Pathogenicity Island

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A pathogenicity island is a contiguous DNA sequence of several genes in the genome of a pathogen (e.g. in bacteria ) that code for virulence factors. Such islands of pathogenicity occasionally serve to differentiate pathogenic agents from their non-disease-causing (non-pathogenic) strains of the same genus. They are often flanked by inverted repeats , which make it possible to transfer the disease-causing genome segments into another strain in a modular manner by means of a horizontal gene transfer, so that a non-pathogenic strain can be transformed into a pathogenic strain, which often has advantages in terms of survival for the pathogen.

literature

  • Reinhard Marre: Clinical Infectious Diseases: Recognizing and Treating Infectious Diseases . Elsevier, Urban & FischerVerlag, 2nd edition 2008, ISBN 9783437217418 , p. 23.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörg Hacker , M. Ott, G. Blum, R. Marre, Jürgen Heesemann, H. Tschäpe, Werner Goebel : Genetics of Escherichia coli uropathogenicity: analysis of the O6: K15: H31 isolate 536. In: Zentralbl. Bacteriol. (1992) Volume 276, Issue 2, pp 165-175. PMID 1559005 .