Porphyromonas gingivalis is the organism most strongly associated with human periodontal disease. It is a member of the Cytophaga/Flavobacter/Bacteroides (CFB) phylum of bacteria, a group phylogenetically more distant from Eschericheria coli, Haemophilus influenzae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Helicobacter pylori, than Gram-positive bacteria. Porphyromonas and Bacteroides spp. are very common causes of human infections, and are among a short list of pathogens that are currently causing the greatest antibiotic resistance problems. While the genome size of most members of the CFB phylum are in the 4-6 megabase range, P. gingivalis has a genome of only 2.34 megabases. We propose to sequence the complete genome of Porphyromonas gingivalis because: it is important in periodontal disease; it is a small genome representative of a medically and phylogenetically important but under-studied CFB group of bacteria; and there is a large group of researchers with appropriate genetic tools to utilize the sequence information for elucidating virulence mechanisms and for vaccine development. There are four specific goals for this genome project:

1. To determine the DNA sequence for the genome of P. gingivalis

2. To analyze and annotate the sequence of P. gingivalis strain W83

3. To integrate information derived from the annotated sequence with experimental data from the P. gingivalis research community

4. To provide P. gingivalis clones, reagents, and information to the research community

This page is created and maintained by Drs. Margaret Duncan, Floyd Dewhirst, and Tsute Chen, Department of Molecular Genetics, The Forsyth Institute .

Last modified on 02/20/2002

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