Comparative Genomics of Synechococcus elongatus Explains the Phenotypic Diversity of the Strains
Marie Adomako, Dustin C. Ernst, Ryan Simkovsky, Yi-Yun Chao, Jingtong Wang, Mingxu Fang, Christiane Bouchier, Rocío López‐Igual, Didier Mazel, Muriel Gugger, Susan S. Golden
Abstract
Synechococcus elongatus is a versatile and robust model cyanobacterium for photosynthetic metabolism and circadian biology research, with utility as a biological production platform. We compared the genomes of closely related S. elongatus strains to create a pangenome annotation to aid gene discovery for novel phenotypes. The comparative genomic analysis revealed the need for a new sequence of the species type strain PCC 6301 and includes two new sequences for S. elongatus strains PCC 6311 and PCC 7943. The genomic comparison revealed a pattern of early laboratory domestication of strains, clarifies the relationship between the strains PCC 6301 and UTEX 2973, and showed that differences in large prophage regions, operons, and even single nucleotides have effects on phenotypes as wide-ranging as pigmentation, phototaxis, and circadian gene expression.