Acute hemorrhagic pneumonia caused by Streptococcus zooepidemicus has emerged as a major disease of shelter dogs and greyhounds. S. zooepidemicus strains differing in multilocus sequence typing (MLST), protective protein (SzP), and M-like protein (SzM) sequences were identified from 9 outbreaks in Texas, Kansas, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. Clonality based on 2 or more isolates was evident for 7 of these outbreaks. The Pennsylvania and Nevada outbreaks also involved cats. Goat antisera against acutely infected lung tissue as well as convalescent-phase sera reacted with a mucinase (Sz115), hyaluronidase (HylC), InlA domain-containing cell surface-anchored protein (INLA), membrane-anchored protein (MAP), SzP, SzM, and extracellular oligopeptide-binding protein (OppA). The amino acid sequences of SzP and SzM of the isolates varied greatly. The szp and szm alleles of the closely related Kansas clone (sequence type 129 [ST-129]) and United Kingdom isolate BHS5 (ST-123) were different, indicating that MLST was unreliable as a predictor of virulence phenotype. Combinations of conserved HylC and serine protease (ScpC) and variable SzM and SzP proteins of S. zooepidemicus strain NC78 were protectively immunogenic for mice challenged with a virulent canine strain. Thus, although canine pneumonia outbreaks are caused by different strains of S. zooepidemicus, protective immune responses were elicited in mice by combinations of conserved or variable S. zooepidemicus proteins from a single strain.

NERSC has developed a five-year strategic plan focusing on three components: Science-Driven Systems, Science-Driven Services, and Science-Driven Analytics. (1) Science-Driven Systems: Balanced introduction of the best new technologies for complete computational systems -- computing, storage, networking, visualization and analysis -- coupled with the activities necessary to engage vendors in addressing the DOE computational science requirements in their future roadmaps. (2) Science-Driven Services: The entire range of support activities, from high-quality operations and user services to direct scientific support, that enable a broad range of scientists to effectively use NERSC systems in their research. NERSC will concentrate on resources needed to realize the promise of the new highly scalable architectures for scientific discovery in multidisciplinary computational science projects. (3) Science-Driven Analytics: The architectural and systems enhancements and services required to integrate NERSC's powerful computational and storage resources to provide scientists with new tools to effectively manipulate, visualize, and analyze the huge data sets derived from simulations and experiments.