SUMMARY BackgroundHelicobacter pylori eradication rates with standard triple therapy are declining worldwide. The optimal management of H. pylori is evolving and new treatment combinations for antibiotic resistant H. pylori strains are required, especially for patients with penicillin allergy.

BackgroundThe genome of the human gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori encodes a large number of DNA methyltransferases (MTases), some of which are shared among many strains, and others of which are unique to a given strain. The MTases have potential roles in the survival of the bacterium. In this study, we sequenced a Malaysian H. pylori clinical strain, designated UM032, by using a combination of PacBio Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) and Illumina MiSeq next generation sequencing platforms, and used the SMRT data to characterize the set of methylated bases (the methylome).ResultsThe N4-methylcytosine and N6-methyladenine modifications detected at single-base resolution using SMRT technology revealed 17 methylated sequence motifs corresponding to one Type I and 16 Type II restriction-modification (R-M) systems. Previously unassigned methylation motifs were now assigned to their respective MTases-coding genes. Furthermore, one gene that appears to be inactive in the H. pylori UM032 genome during normal growth was characterized by cloning.ConclusionConsistent with previously-studied H. pylori strains, we show that strain UM032 contains a relatively large number of R-M systems, including some MTase activities with novel specificities. Additional studies are underway to further elucidating the biological significance of the R-M systems in the physiology and pathogenesis of H. pylori.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1585-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The fully annotated genome sequence of the European strain, 26695 was first published in 1997 and, in 1999, it was directly compared to the USA isolate J99, promoting two standard laboratory isolates for Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) research. With the genomic scaffolds available from these important genomes and the advent of benchtop high-throughput sequencing technology, a bacterial genome can now be sequenced within a few days. We sequenced and analysed strains J99 and 26695 using the benchtop-sequencing machines Ion Torrent PGM and the Illumina MiSeq Nextera and Nextera XT methodologies. Using publically available algorithms, we analysed the raw data and interrogated both genomes by mapping the data and by de novo assembly. We compared the accuracy of the coding sequence assemblies to the originally published sequences. With the Ion Torrent PGM, we found an inherently high-error rate in the raw sequence data. Using the Illumina MiSeq, we found significantly more non-covered nucleotides when using the less expensive Illumina Nextera XT compared with the Illumina Nextera library creation method. We found the most accurate de novo assemblies using the Nextera technology, however, extracting an accurate multi-locus sequence type was inconsistent compared to the Ion Torrent PGM. We found the cagPAI failed to assemble onto a single contig in all technologies but was more accurate using the Nextera. Our results indicate the Illumina MiSeq Nextera method is the most accurate for de novo whole genome sequencing of H. pylori.

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