Genome Characteristics of a Generalist Marine Bacterial Lineage
The ISME Journal (2010), 1–15 & 2010 International Society for Microbial Ecology All rights reserved 1751-7362/10 $32.00 www.nature.com/ismej ORIGINAL ARTICLE Genome characteristics of a generalist marine bacterial lineage Ryan J Newton1, Laura E Griffin1, Kathy M Bowles1, Christof Meile1, Scott Gifford1, Carrie E Givens1, Erinn C Howard1, Eric King1, Clinton A Oakley2, Chris R Reisch3, Johanna M Rinta-Kanto1, Shalabh Sharma1, Shulei Sun1, Vanessa Varaljay3, Maria Vila-Costa1,4, Jason R Westrich5 and Mary Ann Moran1 1Department of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA; 2Department of Plant Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA; 3Department of Microbiology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA; 4Group of Limnology-Department of Continental Ecology, Centre d’Estudis Avanc¸ats de Blanes-CSIS, Catalunya, Spain and 5Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA Members of the marine Roseobacter lineage have been characterized as ecological generalists, suggesting that there will be challenges in assigning well-delineated ecological roles and biogeochemical functions to the taxon. To address this issue, genome sequences of 32 Roseobacter isolates were analyzed for patterns in genome characteristics, gene inventory, and individual gene/ pathway distribution using three predictive frameworks: phylogenetic relatedness, lifestyle strategy and environmental origin of the isolate. For the first framework, a phylogeny containing five deeply branching clades was obtained from a concatenation of 70 conserved single-copy genes. Somewhat surprisingly, phylogenetic tree topology was not the best model for organizing genome characteristics or distribution patterns of individual genes/pathways, although it provided some predictive power. The lifestyle framework, established by grouping isolates according to evidence for heterotrophy, photoheterotrophy or autotrophy, explained more of the gene repertoire in this lineage.
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