Virulence factors generated by pathogenic organisms are considered indispensable for causing diseases in hosts, as these factors help pathogens to evade the defense mechanisms of hosts. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of virulence, therefore, is of great significance in vaccine development and to initiate reverse vaccinology . By using MP3, VFDB, and VICMpred servers, a total of 15 EHPs have been confidently predicted as virulence factors (marked by '*') out of the 44 EHPs (Table ).