Published online: 22 October 2006; Corrected online: 26 March 2007 | doi:10.1038/nbt1243
There is a Corrigendum (April 2007) associated with this Article.
Complete genome of the mutualistic, N2-fixing grass endophyte Azoarcus sp. strain BH72Andrea Krause1, Adarsh Ramakumar1, Daniela Bartels2, Federico Battistoni1, Thomas Bekel2, Jens Boch3, Melanie Böhm1, Frauke Friedrich1, Thomas Hurek1, Lutz Krause2, Burkhard Linke2, Alice C McHardy2, 6, Abhijit Sarkar1, Susanne Schneiker2, 4, Arshad Ali Syed1, Rudolf Thauer5, Frank-Jörg Vorhölter2, 4, Stefan Weidner2, Alfred Pühler2, 4, Barbara Reinhold-Hurek1, Olaf Kaiser2, 4, 7 & Alexander Goesmann2, 71
Laboratory of General Microbiology, University of Bremen, PO Box 330440, D-28334 Bremen, Germany. 2
Center for Biotechnology (CeBiTec), Bielefeld University, PO Box 100131, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany. 3
Institut für Genetik, Martin-Luther-Universität, Weinbergweg 10, D-06120 Halle/Saale, Germany. 4
Lehrstuhl für Genetik, Bielefeld University, PO Box 100131, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany. 5
Max-Planck-Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Karl-von-Frisch-Strasse, D-35043 Marburg, Germany. 6
Present address: Bioinformatics & Pattern Discovery Group, IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA. 7
These authors contributed equally to the work.
Correspondence should be addressed to Barbara Reinhold-Hurek breinhold@uni-bremen.de
Azoarcus sp. strain BH72, a mutualistic endophyte of rice and other grasses, is of agrobiotechnological interest because it supplies biologically fixed nitrogen to its host and colonizes plants in remarkably high numbers without eliciting disease symptoms. The complete genome sequence is 4,376,040-bp long and contains 3,992 predicted protein-coding sequences. Genome comparison with the Azoarcus-related soil bacterium strain EbN1 revealed a surprisingly low degree of synteny. Coding sequences involved in the synthesis of surface components potentially important for plant-microbe interactions were more closely related to those of plant-associated bacteria. Strain BH72 appears to be 'disarmed' compared to plant pathogens, having only a few enzymes that degrade plant cell walls; it lacks type III and IV secretion systems, related toxins and an N-acyl homoserine lactones–based communication system. The genome contains remarkably few mobile elements, indicating a low rate of recent gene transfer that is presumably due to adaptation to a stable, low-stress microenvironment.
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