Comparative Genomic and Metabolomic Analysis of Twelve Strains of Pseudoalteromonas luteoviolacea

Full genome sequences are now available for routine analysis, and in parallel, mass spectrometers are pushing the limits for sensitivity and accuray, generating high quality metabolite data at a high speed. Thus, the challenge is no longer to generate the data that describes secondary metabolite production in microorganisms, but to manually extract important elements of complex data sets and create a meaningful link between the observed chemistry, detected bioactivity, and predicted pathways. The bacterium, Pseudoalteromonas luteoviolacea is a prolific producer of secondary metabolites.1 The genomes of 12 strains of P. luteoviolacea were sequenced and compared with regards to the presence of secondary metabolite clusters. The average genome size of all 12 strains were ~6 Mb with 9-17% of the genome allocated to secondary metabolism, corresponding to 6-20 PKS/NRPS clusters predicted by antiSMASH . Overall, the accessory or variable genes made up more than 65% of the total pan-genome (Fig. 1). However, looking only at predicted biosynthetic genes they add up to almost 90% of the pan-genome, underlining the bio-synthetic heterogeneity of the species With the availability of full genome sequences, it has become apparent that the biosynthetic potential of many microorganisms is much larger than hitherto thought. Mining for new chemical diversity can be done ‘upstream’, directly at the genome level, or ‘downstream’, at the metabolite level. Here, we describe the biosynthetic capabilities of a marine bacterial species, Pseudoalteromonas luteoviolacea – a prolific producer of secondary metabolites. Maria Mansson1, Nikolaj G. Vynne1, Andreas Klitgaard1, Jette Melchiorsen1, Pieter C. Dorrestein2, and Lone Gram1