Neisseria

The genus Neisseria comprises a number of species associated with colonisation in humans and animals mostly as harmless commensals. Two species, Neisseria meningitidis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae are associated with respiratory and genital disease respectively.

Neisseria meningitidis is a causative agent of meningitis, and is responsible for considerable morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Most disease-causing N. meningitidis strains belong to serogroups A, B and C. Serogroup A strains are responsible for epidemic disease in developing countries, and serogroup B and C strains are responsible for outbreaks of menigitis in the developed world.

Data Downloads

• FTP site

• BLAST server

The Sanger Institute has been funded by the Wellcome Trust/Beowulf Genomics to sequence the genomes of strains from serogroups A and C:

N. meningitidis serogroup A strain Z2491, in collaboration with Brian Spratt (Imperial College, UK) and Mark Achtman (University of Cork, Ireland)

N. meningitidis serogroup C strain FAM18, in collaboration with Mark Achtman (University of Cork, Ireland)

We also have a broad ranging collaboration with Martin Maiden (University of Oxford) looking at diversity across the genus, within species, within clones and within infections.

Published Genome Data

The genomes of The genome of Neisseria meningitidis serogroup A strain Z2491, Neisseria meningitidis serogroup C strain FAM18 and Neisseria lactamica 020-06 are all available in the EMBL/GenBank databases with accession numbers AL157959, AM421808 and FN995097respectively.

Shotgun and assembly data from these projects are available from the our FTP site.