Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Napoleon Ballroom C-D, 3rd fl (Sheraton New Orleans)
Clostridium termitidis strain CT1112 is a novel anaerobic, mesophilic; gram positive cellulolytic bacterium isolated from the gut of the wood-feeding termite, Nasutitermes lujae. C. termitidis can utilize wide variety of substrates such as cellulose, cellobiose, glucose, fructose, and many other sugar monomers, as a sole carbon source and produces hydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2), acetate, and ethanol via mixed acid fermentation. The C. termitidis strain CT1112 genome was sequenced by Genome Quebec/McGill University Platform and annotated by IMG/ER (Integrated Microbial Genomes - Expert Review) system. To understand the core metabolisms of C. termitidis, we analyzed the genome-scale metabolic network from its annotated genome sequence. The comparative analysis of C. termitidis with other cellulolytic Clostridium sp. such as C. cellulolyticum H10, C. cellulovorans 743B, C. phytofermentans ISDg and C. thermocellum ATCC 27405 revealed the presence of most of the pathways. On the basis of amino acid sequence comparison, C. termitidis showed high sequence identities of between 55-95% with C. cellulolyticum H10. The gene loci and sequences corresponding to enzymes for each pathway were proposed by percentage identity, higher score (better alignment), and lowest e-value (more significant hit). In addition, the functionality of each enzyme was proposed by conserved domain analysis. This study has generated valuable information of core metabolisms of CT1112 which will be helpful in developing metabolic engineering strategies to improve C. termitidis natural capacity for better industrial applications.