Resequencing of Treponema pallidum ssp. pallidum Strains Nichols and SS14: Correction of Sequencing Errors Resulted in Increased Separation of Syphilis Treponeme Subclusters

Abstract

We identified errors in 11.5% of all annotated genes and, after correction, we found a significant impact on the predicted proteomes of both Nichols and SS14 strains. Corrections of these errors resulted in protein elongations, truncations, fusions and indels in more than 11% of all annotated proteins. Moreover, it became more evident that syphilis is caused by treponemes belonging to two separate genetic subclusters.