Br.001/002. This sub-group is a major presence in relationship to our world-wide collection since 70% of all the isolates and most of the diversity for this sub-group were in this Chinese collection. These results suggest that the

A.Br.001/002 cluster may have LGK-974 in vitro originated in China. Finally, the Ames and Ames-like strains in Texas are descended from common ancestors in Inner Mongolia in China as an extension of this sub-group. It is curious that this lineage would become established in Texas, and perhaps Louisiana, and not in Europe. This leaves behind a missing historical gap within the phylogeography of the Ames lineage. Methods B. anthracis isolates The 191 B. anthracis isolates from China used in this study were previously isolated from a variety of sources and provinces in China (see Additional file 1). One hundred and fifteen isolates were from Xinjiang Province in western China including 107 isolates from soil samples. PXD101 datasheet The remainder of the isolates were recovered from the following provinces with the number of isolates in parenthesis: Hebei (10), Gansu (8), Henan (2), Inner Mongolia (10), Jiangxi (1), Liaoning (26), Sichuan (1) and 18 isolates where the province of origin was not known. In addition to the 107 soil Torin 2 samples from Xinjiang Province isolates were obtained from the following sources: soil (15 additional), air (4), bovine (3), buffalo (1) fur (2), human (25), laboratory (1), marmot (1), sheep (3), swine

(3) and unknown sources (26). In addition to the Chinese isolates there are 6 isolates that were used to describe Figure 4[9, 10] and an additional 5 isolates that were obtained from the CDC as part of the “”Brachman Collection”" (CDC ID # 34064, 34279, 402, 482, 490). All 11 of these isolates belong to the Ames sub-lineage and all were isolated in Texas between

1959–2007. This analysis also includes the original Ames strain that was isolated in 1981 from bovine in Jim Hogg County. All isolates were initially genotyped Methane monooxygenase for a B. anthracis species-specific plcR nonsense mutation that has been suggested as being necessary for stabilization of the virulence plasmids [18]. This single nucleotide polymorphism appears to be diagnostic for B. anthracis [19]. In this study the ancestral State for this marker was used to root the B. anthracis SNP tree to the older and more diverse B. cereus/B. thuringiensis tree. DNA was isolated from each of the 191 isolates as previously described [5]. CanSNP Genotyping TaqMan™ -Minor Groove Binding (MGB) allelic discrimination assays were designed for each of 13 canSNPs and have been described in great detail by Van Ert et al. [5]. The genomic positions for each canSNP and the primer sequences and probes for each site can be found in Supplemental Tables 4 and 5 in the Van Ert et al. [5]. MLVA Genotyping Multiple Locus Variable Number Tandem Repeat (VNTR) Analysis (MLVA) was used to determine the overall diversity of the isolates within each sub-group and sub-lineage.