摘要AIM: To identify and assess the novel makers for detection of Shiga toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7 with an integrated computational and experimental approach.METHODS: High-throughput NCBI blast (E-value cutoff e-5) was used to search homologous genes among all sequenced prokaryotic genomes of each gene encoded in each of the three strains of STEC O157:H7 with complete genomes, aiming to find unique genes in O157: H7 as its potential markers.To ensure that the identified markers from the three strains of STEC O157:H7 can serve as general markers for all the STEC O157:H7 strains, a genomic barcode approach was used to select the markers to minimize the possibility of choosing a marker gene as part of a transposable element.Effectiveness of the markers predicted was then validated by running polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on 18 strains of O157:H7 with 5 additional genomes used as negative controls.RESULTS: The blast search identified 20, 16 and 20 genes, respectively, in the three sequenced strains of STEC O157:H7, which had no homologs in any of the other prokaryotic genomes.Three genes, wzy , Z0372 and Z0344, common to the three gene lists, were selected based on the genomic barcode approach.PCR showed an identification accuracy of 100% on the 18 tested strains and the 5 controls.CONCLUSION: The three identified novel markers, wzy , Z0372 and Z0344, are highly promising for the detection of STEC O157:H7, in complementary to the known markers.