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The Trait Repertoire Enabling Cyanobacteria to Bloom Assessed through Comparative Genomic Complexity and Metatranscriptomics
Citation:
Cao, H., Y. Shimura, M. Steffen, Z. Yang, J. Lu, A. Joel, L. Jenkins, M. Kawachi, Y. Yin, AND F. Garcia-Pichel. The Trait Repertoire Enabling Cyanobacteria to Bloom Assessed through Comparative Genomic Complexity and Metatranscriptomics. mBio. American Society for Microbiology, Washington, DC, 11(3):e01155-20, (2020).
Impact/Purpose:
1) Water bloom development due to eutrophication constitutes a case of niche specialization among planktonic cyanobacteria, but the genomic repertoire allowing bloom formation in only some species has not been fully characterized. 2) We curated 17 potentially relevant, query metabolic pathways and five core pathways in genomes of 45 blooming and 68 non-blooming strains, deriving an index of genomic complexity for each strain's version of each pathway. We show that strain versions of all query pathways were significantly more complex in bloomers, complexity in fact correlating positively with strain blooming incidence in 14 of those. 3) We expect that this approach may find applications to other habitats and organismal groups. 4) OW, regional offices, scientists and water quality managers could be interested in the results.
Description:
Water bloom development due to eutrophication constitutes a case of niche specialization among planktonic cyanobacteria, but the genomic repertoire allowing bloom formation in only some species has not been fully characterized. We posited that the habitat relevance of a trait begets its underlying genomic complexity, so that traits in the repertoire would be differentially more complex in species successfully thriving in the habitat than in close species that do not. We curated 17 potentially relevant, query metabolic pathways and five core pathways in genomes of 45 blooming and 68 non-blooming strains, deriving an index of genomic complexity for each strain's version of each pathway. We show that strain versions of all query pathways were significantly more complex in bloomers, complexity in fact correlating positively with strain blooming incidence in 14 of those. Core pathways, relevant everywhere, showed no differential complexity or correlations. Gas vesicle, toxin and fatty acid synthesis, amino acid uptake, and C, N and S acquisition systems were most strikingly relevant in the blooming repertoire. Further, we validated our findings using gene expression analyses of blooming and non-blooming cyanobacteria in natural settings. We expect that this approach may find applications to other habitats and organismal groups.
