Repetitive Sequences in the Anthrax Pathogen Genome—Use in Molecular Epidemiology and Influence on the Structure of Encoded Proteins

The genome of the anthrax pathogen Bacillus anthracis, like the genomes of other organisms, contains tandem repeat loci of different sizes: from single-nucleotide to large repetitive regions encoding repeats of several dozen amino acids. Tandem repeats are characterized by an increased mutation rate, which changes the number of repeats in tandem. Many repeats are located inside the open reading frames, and if the repeat size is a multiple of three nucleotides, changing the number of repeats does not shift the frame, but changes the amino acid sequence of the corresponding proteins and may even have an adaptive advantage. Most of the proteins corresponding to the open reading frames for which a functional role is known are more or less related to the surface structures of the bacterial cell of B. anthracis. This review provides an analysis of the literature from different years that describes tandem repeats in the genes and proteins encoded by them for the causative agent of anthrax and their possible effect on the phenotype.