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Whole genome sequencing reveals a novel CRISPR system in industrial Clostridium acetobutylicum

  • Genetics and Molecular Biology of Industrial Organisms
  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Clostridium acetobutylicum is an important organism for biobutanol production. Due to frequent exposure to bacteriophages during fermentation, industrial C. acetobutylicum strains require a strong immune response against foreign genetic invaders. In the present study, a novel CRISPR system was reported in a C. acetobutylicum GXAS18-1 strain by whole genome sequencing, and several specific characteristics of the CRISPR system were revealed as follows: (1) multiple CRISPR loci were confirmed within the whole bacterial genome, while only one cluster of CRISPR-associated genes (Cas) was found in the current strain; (2) similar leader sequences at the 5’ end of the multiple CRISPR loci were identified as promoter elements by promoter prediction, suggesting that these CRISPR loci were under the control of the same transcriptional factor; (3) homology analysis indicated that the present Cas genes shared only low sequence similarity with the published Cas families; and (4) concerning gene similarity and gene cluster order, these Cas genes belonged to the csm family and originated from the euryarchaeota by horizontal gene transfer.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by BaGui Scholars Program Foundation, Basic Research Fund of Guangxi Academy of Sciences (NO.10YJ25SW13), Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (2013GXNSFBA019106) and Key Technologies R & D Program of Guangxi (10123007-3).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Non-Food Biomass and Enzyme Technology, National Engineering Research Center for Non-Food Biorefinery, Guangxi Academy of Sciences, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Biorefinery, Nanning, Guangxi, 530007, People’s Republic of China

    Lixin Peng, Jianxin Pei, Hao Pang, Yuan Guo, Lihua Lin & Ribo Huang

  2. College of Life Science and Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi, 530005, People’s Republic of China

    Lixin Peng

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  1. Lixin Peng
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Correspondence to Ribo Huang.

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Peng, L., Pei, J., Pang, H. et al. Whole genome sequencing reveals a novel CRISPR system in industrial Clostridium acetobutylicum . J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 41, 1677–1685 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-014-1507-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-014-1507-3

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