Analysis of Global Collection of Group A <i>Streptococcus</i> Genomes Reveals that the Majority Encode a Trio of M and M-Like Proteins
Hannah R. Frost, Mark R. Davies, Valérie Delforge, Dalila Lakhloufi, Martina Sanderson‐Smith, Velusamy Srinivasan, Andrew C. Steer, Mark J. Walker, Bernard Beall, Anne Botteaux, Pierre R. Smeesters
Abstract
While the GAS M protein has been the leading vaccine target for decades, the bacteria encode many other virulence factors of interest for vaccine development. In this work, we show that emm -like genes are encoded in a remarkable majority of GAS genomes and expressed at a level similar to that for the emm gene. In collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, we developed molecular definitions of the different emm and emm -like gene families. This clarification should abrogate mistyping of strains, especially in the area of whole-genome typing. We have also updated the emm -typing collection by removing emm -like gene sequences and provided in-depth analysis of Mrp and Enn protein sequence structure and diversity.