Diversity of Schlegelella thermodepolymerans Revealed with Nanopore Sequencing

conference paper

English

Schlegelella thermodepolymerans is a thermophilic bacterium known for more than two decades thanks to its ability to decompose polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), environment-friendly, biodegradable and renewable alternatives to petrochemical polymers. Recently, we proved that the type strain S. thermodepolymerans DSM 15344T is also a potent PHA producer, which suggests its utilization for industrial production of bioplastics. Moreover, the strain prefers xylose over other sugars, including glucose. This is caused by unique xyl operon containing genes for xylose transport together with genes for its utilization as we found out from the complete genome assembly we had published previously. Here, we present genome comparisons of the type strain with additional strains S. thermodepolymerans DSM 15264, LMG 21645, and CCUG 50061 using nanopore sequencing. While genomes of all strains possessed gene machinery required for PHA metabolism, only strains DSM 15264 and LMG 21645 showed very high genome similarities, 97.9% and 96.1%, to the type strain, calculated as digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH) values. On the contrary, the genome of the strain CCUG 50061 differed from the others not only in overall genome length but its dDDH value to the type strain was only 23.1%. Since the value is below the 70 % threshold for species delineation, the strain S. thermodepolymerans CCUG 50061 is probably misidentified. Nevertheless, resequencing with short reads is needed to polish inaccurate nanopore-based draft assemblies.

Schlegelella; nanopore; polyhydroxyalkanoates

SEDLÁŘ, K.; MUSILOVÁ, J.; KOUŘILOVÁ, X.; BEZDÍČEK, M.; OBRUČA, S.

14. 12. 2022

Czech Society of Industrial Chemistry

Prague

978-80-88307-11-2

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Chemical Technology

373

378

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