Prevalence and disease associations of superantigens szeF, szeN and szeP in the S. zooepidemicus population and possible functional redundancy of szeF

Localised mitogenic activity in horses following infection with Streptococcus equi

“…This novel role for sAgs is compatible with the characteristic abscessation associated with S. equi infection and the presence of mitogenic factors in the S. equi abscess materials tested here. This is also further supported by the significant association between cases of non-strangles lymph node abscess induced by S. zooepidemicus and the presence of sAg genes (Rash et al, 2014). Results are presented as stimulation index (SI), with the negative control (PBMC culture in medium alone) SI = 1 (not shown) and non-mitogenic response <2.…”

“…Recombinant SzeF from SzBHS5 was found to be active in vitro (Paillot et al, 2010a). However, further studies have shown that approximately 79% of culture supernatants from S. zooepidemicus encoding full length SzeF (as the only sAg) are not mitogenic in vitro, meaning that the lack of mitogenicity observed in N-07 is unsurprising (Rash et al, 2014). This result indicates that sAgs are not essential for S. zooepidemicus abscess formation in the horses.…”

“…zooepidemicus strain BHS5 (SzBHS5) (Paillot et al, 2010a;Rash et al, 2014). Recombinant SzeF from SzBHS5 was found to be active in vitro (Paillot et al, 2010a).…”

“…N-07 was repeatedly non-mitogenic in vitro and culture supernatant from S. zooepidemicus N-07 showed no significant proliferation (SI = 0.9) (Supplementary Table S1). This S. zooepidemicus strain was shown to possess the sAg gene szeF (Paillot et al, 2010a;Rash et al, 2014). szeF sequencing revealed no nucleotide differences when compared to the szeF reference sequence from the …”

Genetic characterization ofStreptococcus equisubspecieszooepidemicusassociated with high swine mortality in United States

“…Putative virulence genes were retrieved from genome sequences according to previous publications ( 13, 24–27 ). The prediction of genomic island (GI) was based on IslandPath-DIMOB, SIGI-HMM, IslandPick and Islander using IslandViewer 4 ( 28 ).…”