Finding diagnostic phenotypic features of Photobacterium in the genome sequences

Photobacterium species are ubiquitous in the aquatic environment and can be found in association with animal hosts including pathogenic and mutualistic associations. The traditional phenotypic characterization of Photobacterium is expensive, time-consuming and restricted to a limited number of features. An alternative is to infer phenotypic information directly from whole genome sequences. The present study evaluates the usefulness of whole genome sequences as a source of phenotypic information and compares diagnostic phenotypes of the Photobacterium species from the literature with the predicted phenotypes obtained from whole genome sequences. All genes coding for the specific proteins involved in metabolic pathways responsible for positive phenotypes of the seventeen diagnostic features were found in the majority of the Photobacterium genomes. In the Photobacterium species that were negative for a given phenotype, at least one or several genes involved in the respective biochemical pathways were absent.