Exploration of the Metabolic Potential of the Corallococcus Genus: A Rich Source of Secondary Metabolites, and CAZymes

Abstract

Different secondary metabolites take on important roles. They can also transport metals, function as sexual hormones, facilitate harmonious coexistence of microbes and living beings, and induce differentiation, besides being used as competitive weapons against other bacteria, fungi, amoebae, plants, insects, and large animals. Progress in next-generation sequencing methods, together with microbial genome sequencing, has unveiled a wealth of natural products (NPs) with yet-untapped potential. Genome mining of Corallococcus species and C. exiguus subspecies that can make secondary metabolites that are clinically important has not been studied very much. The goal of this study is to look into Corallococcus genomes biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) and carbohydrate-active enzyme gene clusters. We fully characterize BGCs from Corallococcus reference genome sequences that are publicly available using bioinformatic tools in addition to phylogenetic and genomic comparisons. Our results show that there is a huge range of BGCs in different Corallococcus genomes, but the species or subspecies level affects the ability to make NPs. Additionally, we investigated unknown and less comparable BGCs at the species level and found that C. llansteffanensis has more potential as a reservoir of new secondary metabolites. These insights will pave the way for the algorithmic identification of species- and subspecies-specific pathways for NP development.