Evolutionary analysis of the Bacillus subtilis genome reveals new genes involved in sporulation

Lei Shi, Abderahmane Derouiche, Santosh Pandit, Shadi Rahimi, Aida Kalantari, Momir Futo, Vaishnavi Ravikumar, Carsten Jers, Venkata R S S Mokkapati, Kristian Vlahoviček, Ivan Mijakovic*

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Bacilli can form dormant, highly resistant, and metabolically inactive spores to cope with extreme environmental challenges. In this study, we examined the evolutionary age of Bacillus subtilis sporulation genes using the approach known as genomic phylostratigraphy. We found that B. subtilis sporulation genes cluster in several groups that emerged at distant evolutionary time-points, suggesting that the sporulation process underwent several stages of expansion. Next, we asked whether such evolutionary stratification of the genome could be used to predict involvement in sporulation of presently uncharacterized genes (y-genes). We individually inactivated a representative sample of uncharacterized genes that arose during the same evolutionary periods as the known sporulation genes and tested the resulting strains for sporulation phenotypes. Sporulation was significantly affected in 16 out of 37 (43%) tested strains. In addition to expanding the knowledge base on B. subtilis sporulation, our findings suggest that evolutionary age could be used to help with genome mining.
Original languageEnglish
JournalMolecular Biology and Evolution
Volume37
Issue number6
Pages (from-to)1667–1678
ISSN0737-4038
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

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