Rino Rappuoli

TL;DR: The genomic sequence of six strains representing the five major disease-causing serotypes of Streptococcus agalactiae, the main cause of neonatal infection in humans, was generated and Mathematical extrapolation of the data suggests that the gene reservoir available for inclusion in the S. agalactic pan-genome is vast and that unique genes will continue to be identified even after sequencing hundreds of genomes.

TL;DR: The cag region may encode a novel H. pylori secretion system for the export of virulence determinants and Transposon inactivation of several of the cagI genes abolishes induction of IL-8 expression in gastric epithelial cell lines.

TL;DR: The entire genome sequence of a virulent serogroup B strain was used to identify vaccine candidates and allowed the identification of proteins that are surface exposed, that are conserved in sequence across a range of strains, and that induce a bactericidal antibody response, a property known to correlate with vaccine efficacy in humans.

TL;DR: Neisseria meningitidis contains more genes that undergo phase variation than any pathogen studied to date, a mechanism that controls their expression and contributes to the evasion of the host immune system.

TL;DR: A decade after the beginning of the genomic era, the question of how genomics can describe a bacterial species has not been fully addressed and the pan-genome, which is composed of a "core genome" containing genes present in all strains, and a "dispensable genome", might be orders of magnitude larger than any single genome.