Phylogenetic Analysis of the Genes in D-Ala-D-Lactate Synthesizing Glycopeptide Resistance Operons: The Different Origins of Functional and Regulatory Genes.

The phylogenetic relationships of glycopeptide resistance proteins were investigated. The amino acid sequences of vanA, vanB, vanR and vanS were used as queries to search against bacterial genomes in the NCBI RefSeq database. Hits with >60% amino acid identity and >90% query coverage were aligned, and phylogenetic trees were reconstructed. The ligase gene phylogenies were highly similar for both queries, revealing two major clusters. One contained [[vanA:vanM][vanB:vanD]vanF] and related proteins, with proteins from different Bacillaceae, mostly from