Nematicidal, Acaricidal and Plant Growth-Promoting Activity of Enterobacter Endophytic Strains and Identification of Genes Associated with These Biological Activities in the Genomes.

In the present study, the nematicidal and acaricidal activity of three Enterobacter endophytic strains isolated from Mimosa pudica nodules was evaluated. The percentages of mortality of Enterobacter NOD4 against Panagrellus redivivus was 81.2%, and against Nacobbus aberrans 70.1%, Enterobacter NOD8 72.4% and 62.5%, and Enterobacter NOD10 64.8% and 58.7%, respectively. While against the Tyrophagus putrescentiae mite, the mortality percentages were 68.2% due to Enterobacter NOD4, 64.3% due to Enterobacter NOD8 and 77.8% due to Enterobacter NOD10. On the other hand, the ability of the three Enterobacter strains to produce indole acetic acid and phosphate solubilization, characteristics related to plant growth-promoting bacteria, was detected. Bioinformatic analysis of the genomes showed the presence of genes related to IAA production, phosphate solubilization, and nitrogen fixation. Phylogenetic analyzes of the recA gene, phylogenomics, and average nucleotide identity (ANI) allowed us to identify the strain Enterobacter NOD8 related to E. mori and Enterobacter NOD10 as E. asburiae, while Enterobacter NOD4 was identified as a possible new species of this species. The plant growth-promoting, acaricidal and nematicidal activity of the three Enterobacter strains makes them a potential agent to include in biocontrol alternatives and as growth-promoting bacteria in crops of agricultural interest.

Draft Genome Sequences of Mexican Babesia bovis Virulent and Attenuated Strains.

Babesia bovis, a tick-borne intraerythrocytic protozoan parasite that belongs to the phylum Apicomplexa, is one of the etiological agents of bovine babesiosis, a highly prevalent disease in tropical and subtropical countries that causes significant morbidity and deaths in cattle. This report presents the draft genome sequences of attenuated and virulent B. bovis strains of Mexican origin.

A Comparative Genomic Study of Attenuated and Virulent Strains of Babesia bigemina.

Cattle babesiosis is a socio-economically important tick-borne disease caused by Apicomplexa protozoa of the genus Babesia that are obligate intraerythrocytic parasites. The pathogenicity of Babesia parasites for cattle is determined by the interaction with the host immune system and the presence of the parasite's virulence genes. A Babesia bigemina strain that has been maintained under a microaerophilic stationary phase in in vitro culture conditions for several years in the laboratory lost virulence for the bovine host and the capacity for being transmitted by the tick vector. In this study, we compared the virulome of the in vitro culture attenuated Babesia bigemina strain (S) and the virulent tick transmitted parental Mexican B. bigemina strain (M). Preliminary results obtained by using the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) showed that out of 27 virulence genes described and analyzed in the B. bigemina virulent tick transmitted strain, only five were fully identified in the attenuated laboratory strain. In all cases, the identity and coverture of the identified genes of the wildtype strain were higher than those of the laboratory strain. This finding is putatively associated with the continuous partial loss of virulence genes in the laboratory strain after several passages of the parasite population under optimal in vitro growth conditions. The loss of virulence factors might be reflected in the absence of symptoms of the disease in cattle inoculated with the attenuated strain despite the presence of infection in the bovine host cells.

Transcriptome assembly dataset of anthelmintic response in Fasciola hepatica.

Fasciola hepatica is a worldwide distributed zoonotic parasitic trematode, which causes a severe liver disease clinically known as fasciolasis in a large number of wild animals, several livestock species as well as humans, prevention and control of fasciolasis is made by massive use of anthelmintic compounds on livestock and inevitably this practice has led to the emergence of anthelmintic resistant Fasciola hepatica and there is a great scientific effort to elucidate the molecular basis of anthelmintic resistance of parasitic helminths in general and of Fasciola hepatica in particular that may lead to improved anthelmintic compounds. In our project, we sequenced the transcriptomes obtained from the anthelmintic response to Triclabendazole and Albendazole on four samples from sensitive and resistant strains of Fasciola hepatica on Illumina HiSeq 4000 Platform and generated about 10.03 Gb per sample. The average genome-mapping rate is 81.29% and the average gene-mapping rate is 62.81%. 30,105 genes were identified in which 28,669 of them are known genes and 1,237 of them are novel genes from novel coding transcripts without any known features, 20,743 novel RNA transcripts were identified of which 14,293 of them are previously unknown splicing event for known genes but no alternative splicing was detected, the remaining 5,213 transcripts were found to be long noncoding RNA.

IurV, Encoded by ORF VCA0231, Is Involved in the Regulation of Iron Uptake Genes in Vibrio cholerae.

The pathogen Vibrio cholerae has multiple iron acquisition systems which allow bacteria to exploit a variety of iron sources across the different environments on which it thrives. The expression of such iron uptake systems is highly regulated, mainly by the master iron homeostasis regulator Fur but also by other mechanisms. Recently, we documented that the expression of many of the iron-responsive genes is also modulated by riboflavin. Among them, the open reading frame VCA0231, repressed both by riboflavin and iron, encodes a putative transcriptional regulator of the AraC/XylS family. Nonetheless, the genes or functions affected by this factor are unknown. In the present study, a series of in silico analyses was performed in order to identify the putative functions associated with the product of VCA0231. The STRING database predicted many iron uptake genes as functional partners for the product of VCA0231. In addition, a genomic neighborhood analysis with the Enzyme Function Initiative tools detected many Pfam families involved in iron homeostasis genetically associated with VCA0231. Moreover, a phylogenetic tree showed that other AraC/XylS members known to regulate siderophore utilization in bacteria clustered together and the product of VCA0231 localized in this cluster. This suggested that the product of VCA0231, here named IurV, is involved in the regulation of iron uptake processes. RNAseq was performed to determine the transcriptional effects of a deletion in VCA0231. A total of 52 genes were overexpressed and 21 genes were downregulated in response to the iurV deletion. Among these, several iron uptake genes and other iron homeostasis-related genes were found. Six gene ontology (GO) functional terms were enriched in the upregulated genes, of which five were related to iron metabolism. The regulatory pattern observed in the transcriptomics of a subset of genes was independently confirmed by quantitative real time PCR analysis. The results indicate that IurV is a novel regulator of the AraC/XylS family involved in the repression of iron uptake genes. Whether this effect is direct or indirect remains to be determined.

Effect of differential processing of the native and recombinant α-amylase from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens JJC33M on specificity and enzyme properties.

AmyJ33, an α-amylase isolated from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens JJC33M, has been characterized as a non-metalloenzyme that hydrolyzes raw starch. In this work, the gene that codifies for AmyJ33 was isolated and cloned. The recombinant α-amylase (AmyJ33r) produced had a molecular weight of 72 kDa, 25 kDa higher than the native α-amylase (AmyJ33). Our results suggest that the C-terminal was processed in a different way in the native and the recombinant enzyme causing the difference observed in the molecular weight. Additionally, the enzyme activity, specificity and biochemical behavior were affected by this larger C-terminal extra region in AmyJ33r, since the enzyme lost the ability to hydrolyze raw starch compared to the native but increased its thermal stability and pH stability, and modified the profile of activity toward alkaline pH. It is suggested that the catalytic domain in recombinant enzyme, AmyJ33r, could be interfered or blocked by the amino acids involved in the C-terminal additional region producing changes in the enzyme properties.

primers4clades: a web server that uses phylogenetic trees to design lineage-specific PCR primers for metagenomic and diversity studies.

Primers4clades is an easy-to-use web server that implements a fully automatic PCR primer design pipeline for cross-species amplification of novel sequences from metagenomic DNA, or from uncharacterized organisms, belonging to user-specified phylogenetic clades or taxa. The server takes a set of non-aligned protein coding genes, with or without introns, aligns them and computes a neighbor-joining tree, which is displayed on screen for easy selection of species or sequence clusters to design lineage-specific PCR primers. Primers4clades implements an extended CODEHOP primer design strategy based on both DNA and protein multiple sequence alignments. It evaluates several thermodynamic properties of the oligonucleotide pairs, and computes the phylogenetic information content of the predicted amplicon sets from Shimodaira-Hasegawa-like branch support values of maximum likelihood phylogenies. A non-redundant set of primer formulations is returned, ranked according to their thermodynamic properties. An amplicon distribution map provides a convenient overview of the coverage of the target locus. Altogether these features greatly help the user in making an informed choice between alternative primer pair formulations. Primers4clades is available at two mirror sites: http://maya.ccg.unam.mx/primers4clades/and http://floresta.eead.csic.es/primers4clades/. Three demo data sets and a comprehensive documentation/tutorial page are provided for easy testing of the server's capabilities and interface.