BLAST score ratio analyses and comparisons between the B38 strain and the six other sequenced genomes, which were analyzed and revised through the MaGe system (Table 1), allowed us to establish that the core of the H. pylori genome consists of 1,275 CDSs. This number is slightly higher than that recently published by McClain and colleagues who identified 1,237 genes, as it takes into account additional CDSs detected by the MaGe system [35]. This number is lower than that calculated from data presented in Additional file 1 (1,358 genes) based on the macroarray hybridization analysis of 120 isolates. This approach overestimated the number of ubiquitous CDSs, as all small CDS (<350 bp) from the 26695 strain genome were excluded from the analysis, and thus were systematically counted as ubiquitous CDSs.