Title
Insights from the comparative genome analysis of natural rubber degrading Nocardia species
Authors
Biraj Sarkar1, Aayatti Mallick Gupta2 & Sukhendu Mandal1,*
Affiliation
1Laboratory of Molecular Bacteriology, Department of Microbiology, University of Calcutta, 35, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata, 700019, India; 2Department of Chemical, Biological & Macro-Molecular Sciences, S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Block-JD, Sector-III, Salt Lake, Kolkata-700 106; Sukhendu Mandal; ORCID ID:0000-0002-7752-0982; *Corresponding author
E-mail: sukhendu1@hotmail.com;
Article Type
Research Article
Date
Received October 5, 2021; Revised October 16, 2021; Accepted October 16, 2021, Published October 31, 2021
Abstract
Nocardia are known to be a facultative human pathogen and can cause infection in immune compromised patients. Though the details research on the virulence factors of Nocardia are scanty but numerous genes that code such factors were reported from different species of Nocardia. Despite of the presence of several virulence factors, species of this genus have been shown to have role in remediation of many toxic and hazardous materials from the environment. In this study, genome sequences of rubber degrading Nocardia sp. BSTN01 and N. nova SH22a have been analyzed to locate the potential virulence genes. Also, the genomes of facultative pathogenic Nocardia like, N. africana, N. brasiliensis, N. kruczakiae, N. transvalensis and N. veterana have been analyzed to find the gene encoding latex clearing protein (Lcp), a rubber oxygenase enzyme of Gram-positive action bacteria. The study provides an insight about the potentiality of rubber-degrading Nocardia species to emerge as future human pathogens and also the probability of a serious concern if the studied facultative pathogens of Nocardia like N. africana, N. brasiliensis, N. kruczakiae, N. transvalensis and N. veteranaare capable of degrading rubber, a regularly used material in clinics. Moreover, use of such possible pathogenic strains for their known role in bioremediation of rubber waste from the environment might be deleterious.
Keywords
poly-cis-isoprene; rubber degradation; Nocardia; whole genome analysis; phylogenomics
Citation
Sarkar et al. Bioinformation 17(10): 880-890 (2021)
Edited by
P Kangueane
ISSN
0973-2063
Publisher
License
This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
