Genome of Ochrobactrum anthropi ATCC 49188 T, a versatile opportunistic pathogen and symbiont of several eukaryotic hosts

Ochrobactrum anthropi is a common soil alphaproteobacterium that colonizes a wide spectrum of organisms and is being increasingly recognized as an opportunistic human pathogen. Potentially life-threatening infec-tions, such as endocarditis, are included in the list of reported O. anthropi infections. These reports, together with the scant number of studies and the organism’s phylogenetic proximity to the highly pathogenic brucellae, make O. anthropi an attractive model of bacterial pathogenicity. Here we report the genome sequence of the type strain O. anthropi ATCC 49188, which revealed the presence of two chromosomes and four plasmids. Ochrobactrum anthropi is a common soil alphaproteobac-terium (7) that can interact with or colonize many eukaryotic organisms, leading to different outcomes, such as disease or even growth of some plants (references 4 and 13 and refer-ences therein). O. anthropi, a close relative of brucellae, has not garnered much attention (5, 8) but is becoming increas-ingly recognized as a potentially problematic opportunistic and nosocomial pathogen (13). A rising number of reported cases includes some potentially life-threatening infections, such a