Pathogens 2014, 3, 280-308; doi:10.3390/pathogens3020280 OPEN ACCESS pathogens ISSN 2076-0817 www.mdpi.com/journal/pathogens Review Leptospiral Pathogenomics Jason S. Lehmann 1, Michael A. Matthias 1, Joseph M. Vinetz 1,2 and Derrick E. Fouts 3,* 1 Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA 92093-0741, USA; E-Mails:
[email protected] (J.S.L.);
[email protected] (M.A.M.);
[email protected] (J.M.V.) 2 Instituto de Medicine Tropical “Alexander von Humboldt”, Department of Cellular and Molecular Sciences, Faculty of Sciences and Laboratory of Research and Development, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima 100, Peru; E-Mail:
[email protected] 3 J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD 20850, USA * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +1-301-795-7874; Fax: +1-301-795-7070. Received: 18 January 2014; in revised form: 22 March 2014 / Accepted: 28 March 2014 / Published: 10 April 2014 Abstract: Leptospirosis, caused by pathogenic spirochetes belonging to the genus Leptospira, is a zoonosis with important impacts on human and animal health worldwide. Research on the mechanisms of Leptospira pathogenesis has been hindered due to slow growth of infectious strains, poor transformability, and a paucity of genetic tools. As a result of second generation sequencing technologies, there has been an acceleration of leptospiral genome sequencing efforts in the past decade, which has enabled a concomitant increase in functional genomics analyses of Leptospira pathogenesis. A pathogenomics approach, by coupling of pan-genomic analysis of multiple isolates with sequencing of experimentally attenuated highly pathogenic Leptospira, has resulted in the functional inference of virulence factors.