Comparative Genomics Discloses the Uniqueness and the Biosynthetic Potential of the Marine Cyanobacterium Hyella patelloides

Baeocytous cyanobacteria (Pleurocapsales/Subsection II) can thrive in a wide range of habitats on Earth but, compared to other cyanobacterial lineages, they remain poorly studied at genomic level. In this study, we sequenced the first genome from a member of the Hyella genus – H. patelloides LEGE 07179, a recently described species isolated from the Portuguese foreshore. This genome is the largest of the thirteen baeocyte-forming cyanobacterial genomes sequenced so far, and diverges from the most closely related strains. Comparative analysis revealed strain-specific genes and horizontal gene transfer events between H. patelloides and its closest relatives. Moreover, H. patelloides genome is distinctive by the number and diversity of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). The majority of these clusters are strain-specific BGCs with a high probability of synthesizing novel natural products. One BGC was identified as being putatively involved in the production of terminal olefin. Our results showed that, H. patelloides produces hydrocarbon with C15 chain length, and synthesizes C14, C16, and C18 fatty acids exceeding 4% of the dry cell weight. Overall, our data contributed to increase the information on baeocytous cyanobacteria, and shed light on H. patelloides evolution, phylogeny and natural product biosynthetic potential.

This work was funded by the National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project UIDB/04293/2020, and by the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000012, Structured Programme on Bioengineering Therapies for Infectious Diseases and Tissue Regeneration, supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). This work was also funded by the FCT grant SFRH/BPD/115571/2016 (ÂB) and by the FCT Projects UIDB/04423/2020 and UIDP/04423/2020. This work was also supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 31570068). The authors acknowledged the support and the use of resources of EMBRC-ERIC, specifically of the Portuguese infrastructure node of the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC-PT) CIIMAR – PINFRA/22121/2016 – ALG-01-0145-FEDER-022121, financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through COMPETE2020 – Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI) and national funds through FCT/MCTES.