Neisseria lactamica 020-06

The genus Neisseria, which comprises oxidase positive diplococci that colonise the mucosa of humans and animals, includes species that are never or rarely pathogenic and two human pathogens of global significance, Neisseria meningitidis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Neisseria lactamica is closely related to the pathogenic Neisseria and, like them, is only ever isolated from humans. N. lactamica is an obligate commensal inhabitant of the human nasopharynx that establishes long-term normally asymptomatic colonisation. Occurrence of N. lactamica is high in infants and young children and declines as the age of the human host population rises. It has been suggested that colonisation of children with N. lactamica plays a role in the development of immunity to the meningococcus, and anti-meningococcal vaccines based N. lactamica have been proposed at various times. Strain 020-06 belongs to sequence type ST-640 and was isolated from a six-week-old child from the UK in 1997. A plasmid of 3,151 bp was present in the organism but does not seem to have been submitted to the INSDC database (adapted from PMID 21092259). (EBI Integr8)