The genome of C. tetani contains a chromosome of approximately 2,8Mb and a large size plasmid (74 kbp) harboring the tetanus-toxin gene. The genome of the strain E88 was sequenced and annotated (PNAS 2003, 100:1316-1321). We have sequenced and performed a first comparison of the genomes of three additional strains (Res Microbiol 2015, 166:326-331). Fourteen additional C. tetani strains were sequenced including historical strains (1952-1968) and recent French clinical isolates. We have the raw data obtained by Illumina sequencing. Sequence comparaison of chromosome and plasmid will be done. For this, in a first time the assembly of sequence read of each strain will be done, in a second time a comparaison of chromosome and the plasmid of these 14 strains by BLAST approach will be made. Finally, a phylogenetic tree will be generated allowing us to see the evolution of this bacteria.

An experiment of RNAseq was performed in triplicate with the strain A of Clostridium tetani in TGY (low production of toxin) and MS (high production of toxin) at 24 and 48 h of culture.  This RNAseq was performed in the Pasteur platform PF2. Different comparisons were performed: MS-48h vs MS-24h, TGY-48h vs TGY-24h, TGY-24h vs MS-24h and TGY-48h vs MS-48h. Excel files with differentially expressed genes were provided. For each comparison there are three excel files: complete.xls (contains results for all features), up.xls (contain results for significantly up-regulated features. Features are ordered from de most significant adjusted p-value to the less significant one) and down.xls  (contain results for significantly down-regulated features. Features are ordered from de most significant adjusted p-value to the less significant one). We would like to perform GO term enrichment analysis on the set of genes showing differential expression patterns in the considered contrasts. State of art tools to identify functional enrichments (e.g. DAVID knowledge) do not recognize Clostridium tetani protein and gene identifiers. One possibility is that such tools do not include Clostridium tetani entries in their databases.  The aim of this project is to develop an alternative approach to carry out the functional enrichment analysis on the differentially expressed genes.