Genome Sequence of Brevibacillus laterosporus Strain GI-9

Abstract

We report the 5.18-Mb genome sequence of Brevibacillus laterosporus strain GI-9, isolated from a subsurface soil sample during a screen for novel strains producing antimicrobial compounds. The draft genome of this strain will aid in biotechnological exploitation and comparative genomics of Brevibacillus laterosporus strains.

GENOME ANNOUNCEMENT

Brevibacillus laterosporus is a unique species of the genus Brevibacillus because of its characteristic physiology, spore formation, and ecology and its use as a biocontrol agent (2, 6, 7). The strain GI-9 was isolated from a subsurface soil sample obtained from a farmland in Chandigarh, located in northern India. This strain was identified during a screen for bacteria displaying antimicrobial activities. The presence of endospores, the phenotypic properties of the strain, and 16S rRNA gene sequence BLAST analysis (GenBank accession no. FR686596) assigned strain GI-9 to the genus Brevibacillus. It has high similarity (99%) to Brevibacillus laterosporus DSM25, the type strain. However, it shows differences in phenotypic properties, including growth at 50°C, a positive reaction in the Voges-Proskauer test, and urea hydrolysis, compared to B. laterosporus.

To gain further insights into its phylogeny and taxonomy and to study the genomic determinants of its useful activities, we sequenced the genome of GI-9 using the Roche 454 GS (FLX Titanium) pyrosequencing platform (Macrogen, Seoul, Republic of Korea). The shotgun sequencing yielded 764,215 reads, amounting to 308,006,351 bases and ∼61-fold coverage. The GS de novo assembler (version 2.6) yielded 61 contigs (over 500 bp) with an average contig size of 84.995 kb and a largest contig of 512.124 kb. The proportion of Q40+ bases (bases with a quality score of 40 or above) was 99.97%. The genome of strain GI-9 has a G+C content of 40.8% and annotation using the RAST (Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology) pipeline (5), RNAmmer 1.2 (4) with further manual inspection revealed 4,775 predicted coding regions (CDSs) and 101 tRNA and 3 rRNA genes.

Earlier diversity studies failed to identify variation in a collection of Brevibacillus laterosporus strains (1, 7). In our case, strain GI-9 was isolated from a unique location (subsurface soil) and is of Indian origin. The genome of GI-9, along with the already available genome of another of Brevibacillus laterosporus strain, LMG 15441, a pathogen of invertebrates (3), will help in mapping the genetic determinants of its valuable properties and also identifying molecular markers in diverse strains for their systematic exploitation in agriculture and medicine.

Nucleotide sequence accession numbers.

This whole-genome shotgun project has been deposited at EMBL under accession numbers CAGD01000001 to CAGD01000061.