Welcome to the Brucella Bioinformatics Portal (BBP)!

Brucella is a Gram-negative, facultative intracellular coccobacillus which causes Brucellosis in humans and animals. The Brucellae are taxonomically placed in the alpha-2 subdivision of the class Proteobacteria. Traditionally there are six species of Brucella based on the preferential host specificity: B. melitensis (goats), B. abortus (cattle), B. suis (swine), B. canis (dogs), B. ovis (sheep) and B. neotomae (desert mice); two new species B. cetaceae (cetacean) and B. pinnipediae (seal) have recently been described by Cloeckaert et al. [Microbes Infect (2001) 3, 729-738]. The first four species are pathogenic to humans in decreasing order of severity making brucellosis a zoonotic disease. These Brucella species have been identified as priority agents amenable for use in biological warfare and bio-terrorism and listed as NIAID category B priority pathogens. Complete genome sequences of 4 Brucella strains are now available. Brucella genome usually has two circular chromosomes of approximately 2.1 MB and 1.2 MB and has a GC content of approximately 57%. There are approximately 3,200 - 3,400 ORFs in each genome. The DNA sequences among different Brucella spp. share greater than 90% homology. The Brucella taxonomy is available here from the NCBI Taxonomy database and is also overseen by the Brucella Taxonomy Committee. More detailed Brucella background information is available here.

Publication:

Zuoshuang Xiang, Wenjie Zheng and Yongqun He. BBP: Brucella genome annotation with literature mining and curation. BMC Bioinformatics. 2006 Jul 16;7(1):347. (Highly Accessed). PMID: 16842628.

Listed are the news related to Brucella research and development. Please submit your news to us and we will have it posted here. Thank you.

• 06/16/08: Important International Brucellosis meeting dates and CRWAD information in Word or HTML format. The website for the Brucella 2008 International Conference (Including the 61th Brucellosis Research Conference) is here: http://www.defra.gov.uk/vla/news/new_conf_bruc.htm. The deadline of submitting abstract is June 27th (Friday), 2008.
• 10/1/07: Announcement about Brucellosis 2008 International Research Conference in Word or HTML format (from Dr. Adrian Whatmore).
• 10/1/07: Sue emailed the 2007 BRC abstract instructions, in Word or HTML format.
• 8/30/07: Sue emailed the 2007 Brucellosis Conference announcement, in Word or HTML format.
• 8/15/07: Many Brucella vaccines have been manually curated and available now in VIOLIN (violinet.org).
• 7/30/07: PHIDIAS (phidias.us), a web-based pathogen-host interaction data integration and analysis system, is published in Genome Biology. PHIDIAS allows genome and motif comparisons between Brucella and other bacteria.
• 7/30/07: Sue's email about 2007 Brucellosis Conference. It has information related to the Chicago Marriott Hotel room reservation.
• 6/15/07: The 2007 Annual Brucellosis Conference will be held December 1-2 in conjunction with CRWAD in Chicago. See Sue's email. The deadline for submitting CRWAD abstract is Sept 7, 2007. Please pre-register for CRWAD by Nov 20.
• 12/06/06: The 59th Brucella meeting proceeding is available in HTML and Word format.
• 10/23/06: Brucella meeting updates in HTML or Word format from Ms. Sue Hagius.
• 8/14/06: This year's Brucella meeting announcement was just released by Ms. Sue Hagius. The deadline for submitting a title to Sue is Monday, October 30, 2006. Here is Sue's email, and here is the announcement in HTML or Word format.
• 7/16/06: The BBP paper is published in BMC Bioinformatics. See abstract from PubMed in Here, or from the journal site in Here. Also check the provisional PDF document.
• 7/13/06: The 2006 CRWAD Meeting will be held December 3- 5, at the Chicago Marriott, Downtown Magnificent Mile, Chicago, Illinois. The deadline for electronic abstract submission is September 8, 2006. Please make your reservations by Nov. 1. The 2006 Brucella Research Conference will be Dec 2-3 as a CRWAD satellite meeting.
• 7/11/06: The International Society of Chemotherapy (ISC) will be organizing a meeting on human brucellosis in Ioannina Greece in November 2006. Further information can be sought on http://www.brucellosismeeting.gr. All world specialists on human brucellosis will be there, aiming at reaching a consensus on aspects of diagnosis, treatment, and future prospects for human brucellosis research.
• 3/10/06: The 2006 Brucella Research Conference will be held in conjunction with CRWAD in Chicago at the downtown Marriot. Our meeting will be December 2-3; theirs December 3-5. When you make your room reservation make sure you tell them you are part of CRWAD because that helps get the meeting rooms cheaper. The CRWAD conference information is available at: http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/microbiology/crwad/index.htm.
• 2/15/06: A new BBP version was announced to the Brucella research community. A lot of changes and updates have been made on BBP since Dr. Yongqun He joined the University of Michigan on July 1, 2005.
• 4/4, 2005: The paper on the recently sequenced genome of B. abortus field strain 9-941 was just published: "Completion of the Genome Sequence of Brucella abortus and Comparison to the highly similar genomes of Brucella melitensis and Brucella suis. Shirley M. Halling, Brooke D. Peterson-Burch, Betsy J. Bricker, Richard L. Zuerner, Zhang Qing, Ling-Ling Li, Vivek Kapur, David P. Alt, and Steven C. Olsen. J. Bacteriol. 2005;187 2715-2726." URL: http://jb.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/187/8/2715?etoc.
• 2/15, 2005: The new book 'Brucella: molecular and cellular biology' that has been recently published by Horizon Scientific Press. For more information: http://www.horizonpress.com/hsp/fnew.html.
• 1/27, 2005: Note: the Brucella community listserv email address has changed. Please subscribe the new listserv on line: https://list.umass.edu/mailman/listinfo/bruce.
• 1/10, 2005: The abstracts of the 2004 Brucellosis Research Conference have been provided by Sue Hagius (Thanks!) at LSU and are available now. Please see our Publications page.
• 11/13-11/14, 2004: The 2004 Brucellosis Research Conference was held on November 13-14, 2004 in Chicago at the Congress Hotel. The detailed meeting information will be posted later.
• 09/06/2004: Dr. Ignacio Lopez-Goni kindly provided the Proceedings of the Brucellosis 2003 International Research Conference and a summary to BBP. Please see our Publications page.
• 09/04/2004: Announced the BBP website to the Brucella email listserv.
• 08/03/2004: The 2004 Brucellosis Research Conference will be held November 13-14 in Chicago at the Congress Hotel. The conference is being held under the auspices of the Conference of Research Workers in Animal Disease (CRWAD) group. Hotel reservations should be made prior to October 1 to secure a room. The 2004 CRWAD meeting information is accessible at: http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/microbiology/crwad/index.htm.
• 07/26/2004: BBP is set up with the current URL.
• 07/09/2004: VBI and its partners have been awarded a 5-year, $10.3 million contract from NIH-NIAID to establish a national Bioinformatics Resource Center (BRC) that consists of a multi-organism relational database in support of infectious disease research. Brucella is one of the targeted pathogens. Dr. Stephen Boyle from Virginia Tech is a participant of the BRC and will be involved in Brucella data annotation. Please see the press release from here. The VBI BRC website is: http://brc.vbi.vt.edu.