Query: NC_008783:671349 Bartonella bacilliformis KC583, complete genome Lineage: Bartonella bacilliformis; Bartonella; Bartonellaceae; Rhizobiales; Proteobacteria; Bacteria General Information: Cauative agent of Carrion's disease. Like other members of this genus, Bartonella bacilliformis is an obligate intracellular parasite, which infects red blood cells. Bartonella bacilliformis is the causative agent of Carrion's disease, also called Oroya fever. This disease is found in the western Andes of South America, and is transmitted through an insect vector. Carrion's disease is characterized by an acute, febrile, anemia with a mortality of 40 to 90%. The anemic phase may be followed by a milder secondary episode, characterized by wart-like skin lesions.
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General Information: This strain was isolated from a human skin biopsy in Brazil, and passaged in nude mice and armadillos. The bacterium is a close relative of M. tuberculosis. However, compared to the latter, the genome of M. leprae is smaller due to reductive genome evolution, with many important metabolic activities including siderophore production, part of the oxidative chain, most of the microaerophilic and anaerobic respiratory chains, and numerous catabolic systems and their regulatory circuits eliminated due to extensive recombination events between dispersed repetitive sequences. It is evident that this species has undergone massive genome reduction over time as a result of its parasitic nature, discarding more than half its genes and rendering it the most striking example of genome reduction in a microbial pathogen.