Bautype: Capsule and Lipopolysaccharide Serotype Prediction for Acinetobacter baumannii Genome

Abstract

Abstract. Acinetobacter baumannii has three clusters of genes for polysaccharide synthesis. Capsular polysaccharides and lipopolysaccharides are major virulence determinants in many Gram-negative bacteria, and play key roles in the overall fitness and virulence in A. baumannii, meanwhile poly-beta-1-6-N-acetylglucosamine was critical for biofilm formation. A variety of studies have been conducted which focused on the surveillance of antimicrobial resistance genes and clones in A. baumannii. However, a tool to perform serotype prediction in A. baumannii is still lacking. Here we present Bautype, a tool for whole genome sequencing-based K and O locus typing in A. baumannii. Using Bautype, users can upload and analyze the genome assembled in a web browser, with the results being displayed in a tabular or graphical format. We demonstrated the high accuracy of predicting K and O locus diversity using Bautype when analyzing more than 3000 A. baumannii genomes. Using our software, we were able to analyze K and O locus diversity among 593 genomes belonging to ST208 (3 K and 8 O). These diverse loci can serve as epidemiological markers for Multi-drug Resistance (MDR) strain subtyping. We also identified 45 novel O locus types. Our findings highlight the importance in monitoring the capsule type and LOS of A. baumannii strains for which Bautype is a tailored clinical software. Bautype is available at http://BauType.net.