Genome sequencing and mining expand the naturalproduct repertoire of Lysobacter

Compounds produced by living organisms serve as an important source of inspiration for the development of pharmaceuticals. A potential source of new natural products are bacteria from a genus with species that are known to produce bioactive natural products, but are relatively understudied. Lysobacter is a genus of bacteria that have attracted attention as possible biocontrol agents and are known to produce antibiotic natural products. To further explore the biosynthetic potential of Lysobacter, we sequenced the genomes of two species and performed genome mining studies on those and publicly available genomes.

In this study we produced draft genome sequences for Lysobacter firmicutimachus and Lysobacter yananisis. We additionally examined 113 publicly available Lysobacter genomes and found that biosynthetic potential of individual species ranges broadly, with species having between 1 and nearly 20 biosynthetic gene clusters. Filtering for more complete genome assemblies and 9 or more biosynthetic gene clusters, we performed genome mining on 24 Lysobacter genomes. Within these genomes we identified 21 unique nonribosomal peptide, 11 unique hybrid polyketide/nonribosomal peptide, 4 unique polyketide, and 27 unique lanthipeptide biosynthetic gene clusters that produce uncharacterized compounds. Additionally, we tentatively identified the biosynthetic gene cluster in L. rmicutimachus responsible for producing plusbacins, which has not been previously identified.

This study demonstrated that Lysobacter have a large repertoire of natural products that remain to be characterized. Additionally, we found that some Lysobacter species are substantially more biosynthetically gifted than others and that strains of the same species of Lysobacter have similar biosynthetic capacities.