همایش ملی بیوانفورماتیک ایران

صفحه اصلی / 4th international edition and 13th Iranian Conference on Bioinformatics

Unlocking the Hidden Potential of Leuconostoc: Insights from Genomic Analysis

نویسندگان :

Bahram Bassami¹ Niloufar Zamanpour² Najmeh Salehi³ Javad Hamedi⁴

1- Department of Translational Biology, School of Biology, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 2- Department of Translational Biology, School of Biology, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 3- Department of Translational Biology, School of Biology, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 4- Department of Translational Biology, School of Biology, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

کلمات کلیدی :

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB)،Leuconostoc،antiSMASH،polyketide synthases،glycolipids

چکیده :

Leuconostoc is gram-positive, non-motile, and heterofermentative of lactic acid bacteria with genome sizes ranging from 1 to 2.5 Mb. These bacteria produce various metabolites, including bacteriocins (Stiles, 1994), organic acids, and aroma compounds such as acetoin, acetaldehyde, and diacetyl (Jay, 1982; Vedamuthu, 1994), which are crucial in food and health biotechnology. However, there are a few studies on the genome mining of their metabolic activities. In this study, we employed antiSMASH (Blin and Shaw, 2023), a bioinformatics tool for bacterial, fungal, and plant genome-wide analysis of secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), to analyze whole genomes of the valid species classified under the Leuconostoc genus. We also utilized the Bacterial Diversity Database (BacDive) (Schober and Koblitz, 2024) and related articles to retrieve related information, focusing on their environmental distribution, pathogenicity, biosafety levels, and associated annotations. Our analysis revealed 18 regions across these strains, with lengths ranging from 10 to 42 Kb, corresponding to five distinct product types, including type III polyketide synthases (PKSs) (39%), ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (28%), terpenes (11%), betalactones (5.5%), heterocyst glycolipid synthase-like PKSs (hgIE-KS) (5.5%), arylpolyene (5.5%), and furans (5.5%). Notably, all species contained at least one region encoding PKSs. Considering various applications of polyketides in pharmaceutical biotechnology with antibiotic, anticancer agents, and antimetabolites activities (Nivina and Yuet, 2019), which are typically obtained from actinobacteria (Robertsen and Musiol-Kroll, 2019). It appears that the potential of Leuconostoc in biotechnology extends far beyond food biotechnology and the production of fermented food. Another interesting result of the current research is the presence of heterocyst glycolipid synthase-like PKSs in L. gasicomitatum, which is typically found in cold-stored, modified atmosphere packaged foods. The hglE-KS enzymes are similar to PKSs but are specifically adapted for the synthesis of heterocyst glycolipids. These glycolipids are typically found in cyanobacteria (Bauersachs and Compaoré, 2009) and form a protective layer around heterocysts, the specialized cells responsible for nitrogen fixation in these organisms. The glycolipid protects nitrogenase enzymes from oxygen. Some types of these glycolipids appear to protect L. gasicomitatum, a psychrotrophic-aerotolerant bacterium, against certain stress factors such as toxic oxygen species and cold conditions. This study highlights the biosynthetic potential of the Leuconostoc genus and its application in biotechnology.