Abstract
Bacillus cereus sensu lato is a group of bacteria of medical and agricultural importance in different ecological niches and with controversial taxonomic relationships. Studying the composition of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in several bacterial groups has been an important tool for identifying genetic information and better understanding genetic regulation towards environment adaptation. However, to date, no comparative genomics study of ncRNA has been performed in this group. Thus, this study aimed to identify and characterize the set of ncRNAs from 132 strains of Bacillus cereus, Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus anthracis to obtain an overview of the diversity and distribution of these genetic elements in these species. We observed that the number of ncRNAs differs in the chromosomes of the three species, but not in the plasmids, when species or phylogenetic clusters were compared. The prevailing functional/structural category was Cis-reg and the most frequent class was Riboswitch. However, in plasmids, the class Group II intron was the most frequent. Also, nine ncRNAs were selected for validation in the strain B. thuringiensis 407 by RT-PCR, which allowed to identify the expression of the ncRNAs. The wide distribution and diversity of ncRNAs in the B. cereus group, and more intensely in B. thuringiensis, may help improve the abilities of these species to adapt to various environmental changes. Further studies should address the expression of these genetic elements in different conditions.
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The authors are grateful to the Universidade Estadual de Londrina and to the institutions that financed this paper. Gonçalves, K.B. was supported by fellowships from CAPES—finance code 001, grant number 88882.448512/2019-01. We would like to thank the reviewers who helped to improve this manuscript.
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Gonçalves, K.B., Appel, R.J.C., Bôas, L.A.V. et al. Genomic insights into the diversity of non-coding RNAs in Bacillus cereus sensu lato. Curr Genet 68, 449–466 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-022-01240-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-022-01240-4