The collaboration project

Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis are found in a variety of habitats, ranging from plants and foods to hospital settings. Associations of Entercoccus with nosocomial infections and high levels of antibiotic resistance have raised concern about these organisms and whether they should all be categorized as opportunistic pathogens.  

To evaluate the genetic potential of community-associated enterococci to cause disease, the genomes of several strains from food and plant sources have been sequenced using Ion Torrent, PacBio and Illumina technologies at UC Davis. We plan to use our expertise in genome annotation to fully annotate these genomes and compare the encoded functionalities.