Genome Guided Bioprospecting of Extremely Halophilic Haloferax sp. AS1 for CAZymes, Bioremediation and Study Metabolic Versatility

An extremely halophilic archaeon was isolated from brine sample collected from a salt pan and designated as AS1. The strain AS1 formed a coherent cluster with the species of genus Haloferax and shared the clade of Haloferax alexandrinus in a neighbour joining phylogenetic tree. The draft genome of strain AS1 comprised of 3,778,087 bp with a G + C content of 66.10%. A total 3,797 (100%) ORFs were predicted in the genome of strain AS1 and 3,740 (98.5%) ORFs were annotated as protein coding genes. Using BLAST2GO programme, gene ontology terms were assigned to the 2305 (60.75%) predicted genes from strain AS1. Further, a total of 1,404 (36.97%) genes from strain AS1, were annotated in 24 KEGG categories using KEGG automated annotation server (KAAS). Our analysis indicates that the genome of strain AS1 harboured 58 genes specific for carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes). Additionally, strain AS1 contain genes involves in degradation of sodium benzoate, chloroalkane and selenite reduction. Furthermore, genome of strain AS1 harboured a set of genes that encode enzymes required for the operation of reductive acetyl CoA pathway and also grew under anaerobic condition when supplied with CO 2 as a sole source of carbon in minimal media. Genome guided bioprospecting is an efficient and holistic approach to study extremozymes produced, bioremediation potential and metabolic versatility of haloarchaea in extreme hypersaline environment.