Genomic and metabolic traits endow Bacillus velezensis CC09 with a potential biocontrol agent in control of wheat powdery mildew disease

Abstract

Bacillus velezensis CC09, which was isolated from healthy leaves of Cinnamomum camphora and previously identified as Bacillus amyloliquefaciens CC09, shows great potential as a new biocontrol agent, in control of many phytopathogenic diseases. To extend our understanding of the potential antifungal capacities, we did a whole genome analysis of strain CC09. Result shows that strain CC09 has a relatively large genome size (4.17Mb) with an average GC content of 46.1%, and 4021 predicted genes. Thirteen secondary metabolites encoding clusters have been identified within the genome of B. velezensis CC09 using genome mining technique. Data of comparative genomic analysis indicated that 3 of the clusters are conserved by all strains of B. velezensis, B. amyloliquefaciens and B. subtilis 168, 9 by B. velezensis and B. amyloliquefaciens, and 2 by all strains of B. velezensis. Another 2 clusters encoding NRPS (Non-Ribosomal Peptide Synthetases) and NRPS-TransATPKS (NRPS and trans-Acyl Transferase Polyketide Synthetases) respectively are observed only in 15 B. velezensis strains, which might lead to the synthesis of novel bioactive compounds and could be explored as antimicrobial agents in the future. These clusters endow B. velezensis CC09 with strong and broad antimicrobial activities, for example, in control of wheat powdery mildew disease. Moreover, our data further confirmed the taxonomy of strain CC09 is a member of B. velezensis rather than a strain of B. amyloliquefaciens based on core genome sequence analysis using phylogenomic approach.

Keywords: B. velezensis; Genome sequencing; Phylogenomic tree; Secondary metabolite clusters; Wheat powdery mildew.