Plant Pathol J > Volume 34(3); 2018 > Article
Shanmugam, Dubey, Ponpandian, Rim, Seo, Bae, and Jeon: Genomic Insights into Nematicidal Activity of a Bacterial Endophyte, Raoultella ornithinolytica MG against Pine Wilt Nematode

Abstract

Pine wilt disease, caused by the nematode Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, is one of the most devastating conifer diseases decimating several species of pine trees on a global scale. Here, we report the draft genome of Raoultella ornithinolytica MG, which is isolated from mountain-cultivated ginseng plant as an bacterial endophyte and shows nematicidal activity against B. xylophilus. Our analysis of R. ornithinolytica MG genome showed that it possesses many genes encoding potential nematicidal factors in addition to some secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters that may contribute to the observed nematicidal activity of the strain. Furthermore, the genome was lacking key components of avermectin gene cluster, suggesting that nematicidal activity of the bacterium is not likely due to the famous anthelmintic agent of wide-spread use, avermectin. This genomic information of R. ornithinolytica will provide basis for identification and engineering of genes and their products toward control of pine wilt disease.

Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, commonly known as pine wood nematode (PWN) is a causal agent of pine wilt disease (PWD) that causes extensive damage to forest ecosystem. The nematodes uses Monochamus beetles as vectors to infect mainly Pinus species and causes xylem dysfunction in their host, resulting in fatal wilting symptom (Mota and Vieira, 2008). In general, controls of PWD rely on aerial application of insecticides to prevent vector transmission. In addition, injection of chemicals, such as broad-spectrum of nematicides including avermectin and abamectin into the tree trunk is widely put in practice (Lee et al., 2003; Takai et al., 2003). Use of synthetic pesticides and chemicals raises great environmental concerns towards non-target organisms and human health (Jayaraj et al., 2016). In line with this, the nematicidal activities of bacteria have been regarded as alternative sources of ecofriendly biological controls of PWN (Eljounaidi et al., 2016; Zheng et al., 2016a).
Raoultella ornithinolytica strain MG (R. ornithinolytica MG hereafter) is a gram negative bacterium recently isolated from mountain-cultivated ginseng (MG) plants in South Korea (Khan et al., 2017). We found that ethyl acetate extract (EtOAc) of R. ornithinolytica MG culture has nematicidal activity against PWNs. To identify and understand potential genome-encoded factors that are associated with the nematicidal activity of this bacterium, here we set out to determine the draft genome of R. ornithinolytica MG. Furthermore, we predicted genes involved in production of compounds including secondary metabolites, which are potentially contributing to nematicidal activity.
The R. ornithinolytica MG strain was identified based on morphological attributes and 16S rDNA sequencing in our previous study (Khan et al., 2017). R. ornithinolytica MG strain was deposited in the Korean Collection for Type Cultures (deposition number: KCTC13338BP). The genomic DNA of R. ornithinolytica MG was extracted from an overnight bacterial culture grown at 37°C at 200 rpm in nutrient broth [peptone 0.5% w/v (Becton, Dickinson and Company, Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA), yeast extract 0.5% w/v (Duchefa Biochemie, Haarlem, The Netherlands), agar 0.5% w/v (Becton, Dickinson and Company), NaCl 0.5% w/v; pH 6.8]. Standard phenol-chloroform method was used for genomic DNA extraction (He, 2011; Maniatis et al., 1982).
The 500 μl of R. ornithinolytica MG culture grown for 12 h was transferred to the 500 ml of Tryptic Soy Broth (TSB) (Becton, Dickinson and Company) in 1000 ml Erlenmeyer flask and incubated for 5 days at 30°C with 150 rpm. After 5 days, an equal volume of EtOAc (500 ml) (Duksan Reagents, Ansan, Korea) was added to the broth culture and mixed well by shaking vigorously, followed by sonication for 30 min. The EtOAc mixture was incubated for overnight on orbital shaker at 130 rpm and allowed to stand for 2 h. The top clear phase was transferred to a round flask and condensed in a rotary evaporator at 40°C (Paul et al., 2013). The crude EtOAc extract was dissolved in a solution of 3% Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (Junsei, Tokyo, Japan) and then dried completely. Approximately 100 B. xylophilus nematodes (mixture of L2, L3 and L4/adult stages) were taken in 90 μl of autoclaved distilled water in each well and the nematicidal activity of total metabolites of EtOAc extracts were tested by adding 10 μl at various concentrations (1000 ppm to 100 ppm) with six technical replications per concentration in a 96-well plate on different days, and 3% DMSO was used as control. The plates were then incubated for three days at 20°C and the numbers of alive/dead nematodes were counted at 12, 24 and 48 h under a microscope and the percentage of nematode mortality was calculated (Choi et al., 2006; Guo et al., 2017).
Genome sequencing was performed with a PacBioRS II (Pacific Biosciences, Menlo Park, California, USA) at Theragen Etex Co., Ltd (Suwon, Korea). Raw sequences were assembled using the hierarchical genome assembly process (HGAP3) de novo assembler (Chin et al., 2013), and the resulting genome was annotated by NCBI prokaryotic genome automatic annotation pipeline (PGAAP) (Tatusova et al., 2016). The draft genome sequence of R. ornithinolytica strain MG was deposited in GenBank under the accession number CP017802.
Secondary metabolite gene clusters in the R. ornithinolytica MG genome were predicted using anti-SMASH search (Weber et al., 2015). Comparative analysis of R. ornithinolytica strains were performed and visualized with CLC Genomics Workbench (v9.0.1) (QIAGEN, Aarhus, Denmark, http://www.clcbio.com).
Ethyl acetate extract of the bacterial culture was tested for its potential nematicidal activity by measuring proportion of nematodes that are killed by addition of varying concentration of extract. Compared to the control (3% DMSO), the extract showed about 40% nematicidal activity at concentrations ranging from 10 to 70 ppm (Fig. 1). Nematicidal activity started to increase at higher concentration (over 100 ppm) and peaked at 1000 ppm nearly annihilating B. xylophilus population under treatment. These results clearly suggest the potential of R. ornithinolytica MG as a source of compounds having activity against B. xylophilus.
Given such activity of R. ornithinolytica MG against B. xylophilus, we carried out sequencing of bacterial draft genome to provide genomic basis for pinpointing genetic components that endow the bacteria with nematicidal activity. Subsequently, a total of 1,066,832,850 bp were sequenced in 114,707 reads, which were assembled using the hierarchical genome assembly process (HGAP3) de novo assembler, resulting in average coverage depth of 182x. This final assembly of the entire R. ornithinolytica MG was determined to be 5,719,363 bp with G + C content of 55.67% with 3 contigs. Among the contigs, the largest one was 5,499,520 bp long, accounting for about 96% of entire genome and the remaining contigs were 218,906 bp and 937 bp long, respectively.
A total of 5,322 genes in the draft genome of R. ornithinolytica MG was annotated by NCBI Prokaryotic Genome Automatic Annotation Pipeline (PGAAP). These includes 5,132 coding genes, 128 RNA genes and 62 pseudogenes (Table 1). Among 5,132 coding genes, 4,445 coding genes (86.61%) were assigned putative functions based on functional annotation. The subsystem features were annotated by RAST server (Aziz et al., 2008) and visualized by using CiVi web based visualization tool (Overmars et al., 2015) (Fig. 2).
In comparison, the complete genome of R. ornithinolytica strain B6 (Shin et al., 2013) from public database (NCBI Accession: CP004142) is composed of a circular chromosome of 5,398,151 bp with 55.9% GC content. A total of 4,909 coding genes, 79 tRNAs, and 25 rRNAs were annotated, and 4,070 coding genes (82.90%) were predicted to have putative functions. This implies that the R. ornithinolytica strain MG possesses larger genome encoding more number of genes than strain B6.
In order to mine the nematicidal factors in R. ornithinolytica MG, we took two approaches. In the first approach, we attempted to predict and catalogue gene clusters that are involved in secondary metabolite biosynthesis, potentially contributing to nematicidal activity against B. xylophilus. The anti-SMASH search for secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters on the genome of R. ornithinolytica MG showed that there are 11 biosynthetic gene clusters related to the production of different types of secondary metabolites including Microcin (7 clusters), Microcin-Bacterocin (1 cluster), Nrps (1 cluster), Nrps-T1PKS (1cluster), and Arylpolyene (1 cluster) (Table 2, Supplementary Fig. 1, 2). The presence of these gene clusters was also observed in the genomes of R. ornithinolytica strains B6 (2,3-Butanediol-producing bacterium isolated from oil-contaminated soil) (NCBI Accession: CP004142) (Shin et al., 2013), R. ornithinolytica strain S12 (Lignin-degrading bacterium isolated from forest soil) (NCBI Accession: CP010557) (Bao et al., 2015) and A14 (Isolated from animal feces) (Leung et al., 2016) (NCBI Accession: CP008886.1) (Table 2). Interestingly, only three gene clusters such as Nrps (1 cluster), Arylpolyene (1 cluster) and Bacteriocin (1 cluster) were found on the genome of R. ornithinolytica strain S12, while the remaining two isolates contained the 11 clusters. In general, Microcin and Bacteriocin mimics siderophore so as to target and eliminate the enteric pathogens. The Arylpolyene gene clusters are similar to carotenoids. The Nrps cluster genes are known for their biological activities and pharmacological properties (Agrawal et al., 2016).
In the second approach, we examined presence/absence of 42 known nematicidal factors (Zheng et al., 2016b) in the R. ornithinolytica MG genome using BLASTP search (Altschul et al., 1990) (Supplementary Table 1). This search revealed presence of 9 potential nematicidal factors encoded in the genome. These include homologs of amidophosphoribosyltransferase (Xia et al., 2011), Calcium-transporting ATPase (Fan et al., 2007), Chitinase (including basic and endochitinases) and Serrawettin W2 (Fragment) (Zheng et al., 2016b) (Table 3).
To rule out the possibility that nematicidal activity of R. ornithinolytica MG is mediated by avermectin, we searched the genome for orthologous genes in avermectin (anti-nematode agent) biosynthetic gene (18 genes) (Kim et al., 2016). This showed that 5 key genes including AveR (Transcriptional regulator), AveC (Modification: spiroketal moiety C22-23 dehydration), AveE (Modification: Furan ring reduction), AveBVI and AveBVII (Modification: Addition of sugar moiety) are missing (Ikeda et al., 1999) (Supplementary Fig. 2), suggesting that the observed nematicidal activity of the bacterium cannot be attributed to avermectin.
Although genome sequences of a few R. ornithinolytica strains including the strain B6 were deposited in NCBI, the genome sequence of R. ornithinolytica MG is the first to be reported with nematicidal activity against B. xylophilus. Considering the nematicidal activity, the availability of R. ornithinolytica MG draft genome sequence would provide genetics and genomic basis in understanding and improving its application to controlling PWD.

Supplementary Information

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Forest Science (Project No. FE0702-2016-02-2016).

Fig. 1
Nematicidal activity of Raoultella ornithinolytica MG secondary metabolites against Bursaphelenchus xylophilus. Nematicidal activity was measured as percentage of dead Bursaphelenchus xylophilus nematodes (y-axis) over different concentrations (ppm) of R. ornithinolytica MG secondary metabolites (x-axis) with reference to 3% DMSO as control.
ppj-34-250f1.gif
Fig. 2
Genome map of the R. ornithinolytica MG chromosome showing the largest contig (contig 1, which accounts for 96% of draft genome). The circular genome map with genes present on plus strand and minus strands is shown as outer and inner rings, respectively, with COG category coloring scheme. The predicted secondary metabolites gene clusters (11 cluster) along with their start and end regions were shown in arrow representations. The GC percentage along the genome map is represented as inner most circle in red.
ppj-34-250f2.gif
Table 1
Annotated genomic features of Raoultella ornithinolytica strain MG
Features Numbers
Genbank accession CP017802
Genome size (bp) 5,719,363
G+C content (%) 55.67
Genes (coding) 5132
rRNA 25
tRNA 85
ncRNA 18
Pseudogenes 62
Table 2
Predicted secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters on the genome of Raoultella ornithinolytica MG
Biosynthetic gene clusters R. ornithinolytica

Strain MG Strain B6 Strain S12 Strain A14
Cluster1 Microcin-Bacteriocin Nrps-T1pks Arylpolyene Microcin
Cluster2 Microcin Nrps Bacteriocin Microcin
Cluster3 Microcin Microcin Nrps Microcin
Cluster4 Microcin Microcin Microcin
Cluster5 Microcin Microcin Nrps
Cluster6 Microcin Microcin Nrps-T1pks
Cluster7 Nrps Microcin Microcin
Cluster8 Nrps-T1pks Microcin-Bacteriocin Microcin
Cluster9 Microcin Arylpolyene Arylpolyene
Cluster10 Microcin Microcin Microcin-Bacteriocin
Cluster11 Arylpolyene Microcin Microcin
Table 3
Predicted nematicidal factors homolog on the genome of Raoultella ornithinolytica MG (E-value < 0.001)
Known nematicidal factor (Uniprot ID) Homolog in R. ornithinolytica MG E-Value
Amidophosphoribosyltransferase (P00497) WP_015583773.1 2e-104
WP_015585459.1 8e-16
Calcium-transporting ATPase (Q5KCV6) WP_004863810.1 2e-159
WP_004859205.1 2e-140
WP_015585300.1 4e-43
WP_015585008.1 8e-17
WP_015584876.1 5e-13
Chitinase (Q5MNU2, A9LI60, A6Y9S8, B5L0W0, A9Q0I9 and Q8TF88) WP_004860814.1 3e-27
Serrawettin W2 (Fragment) (K7WRE4) WP_004862380.1 1e-128

References

Agrawal, S, Adholeya, A and Deshmukh, SK 2016. The Pharmacological potential of non-ribosomal peptides from marine sponge and tunicates. Front Pharmacol. 7:333
crossref pmid pmc
Altschul, SF, Gish, W, Miller, W, Myers, EW and Lipman, DJ 1990. Basic local alignment search tool. J Mol Biol. 215:403-410.
crossref pmid
Aziz, RK, Bartels, D, Best, AA, DeJongh, M, Disz, T, Edwards, RA, Formsma, K, Gerdes, S, Glass, EM, Kubal, M, Meyer, F, Olsen, GJ, Olson, R, Osterman, AL, Overbeek, RA, McNeil, LK, Paarmann, D, Paczian, T, Parrello, B, Pusch, GD, Reich, C, Stevens, R, Vassieva, O, Vonstein, V, Wilke, A and Zagnitko, O 2008. The RAST server: rapid annotations using subsystems technology. BMC Genomics. 9:75
crossref pmid pmc
Bao, W, Zhou, Y, Jiang, J, Xu, Z, Hou, L and Leung, FC 2015. Complete genome sequence of Raoultella ornithinolytica strain S12, a lignin-degrading bacterium isolated from forest soil. Genome Announc. 3:e00104-15.
crossref pmid pmc
Chin, CS, Alexander, DH, Marks, P, Klammer, AA, Drake, J, Heiner, C, Clum, A, Copeland, A, Huddleston, J, Eichler, EE, Turner, SW and Korlach, J 2013. Nonhybrid, finished microbial genome assemblies from long-read SMRT sequencing data. Nat Methods. 10:563-569.
crossref pmid
Choi, HI, Park, JY, Shin, SC and Park, IK 2006. Nematicidal activity of medicinal plant extracts and two cinnamates isolated from Kaempferia galanga L. (Proh Hom) against the pine wood nematode, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus. Nematology. 8:359-365.
crossref
Eljounaidi, K, Lee, SK and Bae, H 2016. Bacterial endophytes as potential biocontrol agents of vascular wilt diseases - review and future prospects. Biol Control. 103:62-68.
crossref
Fan, W, Idnurm, A, Breger, J, Mylonakis, E and Heitman, J 2007. Eca1, a sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase, is involved in stress tolerance and virulence in Cryptococcus neoformans. Infect Immun. 75:3394-3405.
crossref pmid pmc
Guo, Q, Du, G, Qi, H, Zhang, Y, Yue, T, Wang, J and Li, R 2017. A nematicidal tannin from Punicagranatum L. rind and its physiological effect on pine wood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus). Pestic Biochem Physiol. 135:64-68.
crossref pmid
He, F 2011. E. coli genomic DNA extraction. Bio-protocol Bio. 101:e97.
crossref
Ikeda, H, Nonomiya, T, Usami, M, Ohta, T and Ōmura, S 1999. Organization of the biosynthetic gene cluster for the polyketide anthelmintic macrolide avermectin in Streptomyces avermitilis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 96:9509-9514.
crossref pmid pmc
Jayaraj, R, Megha, P and Sreedev, P 2016. Organochlorine pesticides, their toxic effects on living organisms and their fate in the environment. Interdiscip Toxicol. 9:90-100.
crossref pmid
Khan, CE, Jeon, J, Rim, OS, Park, Y-H, Lee, KS and Bae, H 2017. Composition, diversity and bioactivity of culturable bacterial endophytes in mountain-cultivated ginseng in Korea. Sci Rep. 7:10098
crossref pmid pmc
Kim, J, Lee, SM and Park, CG 2016. Bursaphelenchus xylophilus is killed by homologues of 2-(1-undecyloxy)-1-ethanol. Sci Rep. 6:29300
crossref pmid pmc
Lee, SM, Chung, YJ, Moon, YS, Lee, SG, Lee, DW, Choo, HY and Lee, CK 2003. Insecticidal activity and fumigation conditions of several insecticides against Japanese pine sawyer (Monochamus alternatus) larvae. J Korean For Soc. 92:191-198.
Leung, F, Liu, L and Jiang, J 2016 Raoultella ornithinolytica strain A14 chromosome, complete genome deposited in National Centre for Biotechnology Information genome database. Deposited on: 9th August 2016. URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/CP008886.1/. 9 February 2018.
Maniatis, T, Fritsch, EF and Sambrook, J 1982. Molecular cloning a laboratory manual. 4th ed. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Springs Harbor, NY, USA.
Mota, M and Vieira, P 2008. Pine wilt disease: a worldwide threat to forest ecosystems. Springer, Heidelberg, Germany.
Overmars, L, van Hijum, SA, Siezen, RJ and Francke, C 2015. CiVi: circular genome visualization with unique features to analyze sequence elements. Bioinformatics. 31:2867-2869.
crossref pmid
Paul, NC, Ji, SH, Deng, JX and Yu, SH 2013. Assemblages of endophytic bacteria in chili pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) and their antifungal activity against phytopathogens in vitro. Plant Omics. 6:441-448.
Shin, SH, Um, Y, Beak, JH, Kim, S, Lee, S, Oh, M-K, Kim, Y-R, Lee, J and Yang, K-S 2013. Complete genome sequence of Raoultella ornithinolytica strain B6, a 2,3-butanediol-producing bacterium isolated from oil-contaminated soil. Genome Announc. 1:e00395-13.
crossref pmid pmc
Takai, K, Suzuki, T and Kawazu, K 2003. Development and preventative effect against pine wilt disease of a novel liquid formulation of emamectin benzoate. Pest Manag Sci. 59:365-370.
crossref pmid
Tatusova, T, DiCuccio, M, Badretdin, A, Chetvernin, V, Nawrocki, EP, Zaslavsky, L, Lomsadze, A, Pruitt, KD, Borodovsky, M and Ostell, J 2016. NCBI prokaryotic genome annotation pipeline. Nucl Acids Res. 44:6614-6624.
crossref pmid pmc
Weber, T, Blin, K, Duddela, S, Krug, D, Kim, HU, Bruccoleri, R, Lee, SY, Fischbach, MA, Müller, R, Wohlleben, W, Breitling, R, Takano, E and Medema, MH 2015. antiSMASH 3.0-a comprehensive resource for the genome mining of biosynthetic gene clusters. Nucl Acids Res. 43:W237-W243.
crossref pmid pmc
Xia, Y, Xie, S, Ma, X, Wu, H, Wang, X and Gao, X 2011. The purL gene of Bacillus subtilis is associated with nematicidal activity. FEMS Microbiol Lett. 322:99-107.
crossref pmid
Zheng, Z, Zheng, J, Liu, H, Peng, D and Sun, M 2016a. Complete genome sequence of Fictibacillus phosphorivorans G25-29, a strain toxic to nematodes. J Biotechnol. 239:20-22.
crossref pmid
Zheng, Z, Zheng, J, Zhang, Z, Peng, D and Sun, M 2016b. Nematicidal spore-forming Bacilli share similar virulence factors and mechanisms. Sci Rep. 6:31341
crossref pmid
TOOLS
METRICS Graph View
  • 5 Web of Science
  • 3 Crossref
  •  0 Scopus
  • 3,663 View
  • 55 Download
Related articles


ABOUT
BROWSE ARTICLES
EDITORIAL POLICY
FOR CONTRIBUTORS
Editorial Office
Rm,904 (New Bldg.) The Korean Science & Technology Center 22,
Teheran-ro 7-Gil, Gangnamgu, Seoul 06130, Korea
Tel: +82-2-557-9360    Fax: +82-2-557-9361    E-mail: paper@kspp.org                

Copyright © 2024 by Korean Society of Plant Pathology.

Developed in M2PI

Close layer
prev next