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Ivanova, Natalia N.

Publications and source records attributed to Ivanova, Natalia N..

Microbial Metagenomes Across a Complete Phytoplankton Bloom Cycle: High-Resolution Sampling Every 4 Hours Over 22 Days

In May and June of 2021, marine microbial samples were collected for DNA sequencing in East Sound, WA, USA every 4 hours for 22 days. This high temporal resolution sampling effort captured the last 3 days of a Rhizosolenia sp. bloom, the initiation and complete bloom cycle of Chaetoceros socialis (8 days), and the following bacterial bloom (2 days). Metagenomes were completed on the time series, and the dataset includes 128 size-fractionated microbial samples (0.22–1.2 µm), providing gene abundances for the dominant members of bacteria, archaea, and viruses. This dataset also has time-matched nutrient analyses, flow cytometry data, and physical parameters of the environment at a single point of sampling within a coastal ecosystem that experiences regular bloom events, facilitating a range of modeling efforts that can be leveraged to understand microbial community structure and their influences on the growth, maintenance, and senescence of phytoplankton blooms.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

IMG/PR: a database of plasmids from genomes and metagenomes with rich annotations and metadata

Plasmids are mobile genetic elements found in many clades of Archaea and Bacteria. They drive horizontal gene transfer, impacting ecological and evolutionary processes within microbial communities, and hold substantial importance in human health and biotechnology. To support plasmid research and provide scientists with data of an unprecedented diversity of plasmid sequences, we introduce the IMG/PR database, a new resource encompassing 699 973 plasmid sequences derived from genomes, metagenomes and metatranscriptomes. IMG/PR is the first database to provide data of plasmid that were systematically identified from diverse microbiome samples. IMG/PR plasmids are associated with rich metadata that includes geographical and ecosystem information, host taxonomy, similarity to other plasmids, functional annotation, presence of genes involved in conjugation and antibiotic resistance. The database offers diverse methods for exploring its extensive plasmid collection, enabling users to navigate plasmids through metadata-centric queries, plasmid comparisons and BLAST searches. The web interface for IMG/PR is accessible at https://img.jgi.doe.gov/pr. Plasmid metadata and sequences can be downloaded from https://genome.jgi.doe.gov/portal/IMG_PR.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Genome sequences of key bacterial symbionts of entomopathogenic nematodes: Xenorhabdus cabanillasii DSM17905, Xenorhabdus ehlersii DSM16337, Xenorhabdus japonica DSM16522, Xenorhabdus koppenhoeferii DSM18168, and Xenorhabdus mauleonii DSM17908

ABSTRACT Xenorhabdus species are bacterial symbionts of entomopathogenic Steinernema nematodes, in which they produce diverse secondary metabolites implicated in pathogenesis. To expand resources for natural product prospecting and exploration of host-symbiont-pathogen relationships, the genomes of Xenorhabdus cabanillasi, Xenorhabdus ehlersii , Xenorhabdus japonica , Xenorhabdus koppenhoeferii , and Xenorhabdus mauleonii were analyzed.

Robertson, Raegan↗

Comparative Genomics Using the Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomes (IMG/M) System: A Deinococcus Use Case

The Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomes (IMG/M) system is a web-based platform that provides access to the wealth of public sequence data arising from diverse environments and enables the user to answer biological questions. In this review, we explore IMG’s tools and features using genome data for genus Deinococcus isolates as well as metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). Here, we use various comparative genomic and visualization tools to investigate this genus and address specific research questions.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

IMG/VR v4: an expanded database of uncultivated virus genomes within a framework of extensive functional, taxonomic, and ecological metadata

Viruses are widely recognized as critical members of all microbiomes. Metagenomics enables large-scale exploration of the global virosphere, progressively revealing the extensive genomic diversity of viruses on Earth and highlighting the myriad of ways by which viruses impact biological processes. IMG/VR provides access to the largest collection of viral sequences obtained from (meta)genomes, along with functional annotation and rich metadata. A web interface enables users to efficiently browse and search viruses based on genome features and/or sequence similarity. Here, for this work, we present the fourth version of IMG/VR, composed of >15 million virus genomes and genome fragments, a ≈6-fold increase in size compared to the previous version. These clustered into 8.7 million viral operational taxonomic units, including 231 408 with at least one high-quality representative. Viral sequences in IMG/VR are now systematically identified from genomes, metagenomes, and metatranscriptomes using a new detection approach (geNomad), and IMG standard annotation are complemented with genome quality estimation using CheckV, taxonomic classification reflecting the latest taxonomic standards, and microbial host taxonomy prediction. IMG/VR v4 is available at https://img.jgi.doe.gov/vr, and the underlying data are available to download at https://genome.jgi.doe.gov/portal/IMG_VR.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Expanding the genomic encyclopedia of Actinobacteria with 824 isolate reference genomes

The phylum Actinobacteria includes important human pathogens like Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Corynebacterium diphtheriae and renowned producers of secondary metabolites of commercial interest, yet only a small part of its diversity is represented by sequenced genomes. Here, we present 824 actinobacterial isolate genomes in the context of a phylum-wide analysis of 6,700 genomes including public isolates and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). We estimate that only 30%–50% of projected actinobacterial phylogenetic diversity possesses genomic representation via isolates and MAGs. A comparison of gene functions reveals novel determinants of host-microbe interaction as well as environment-specific adaptations such as potential antimicrobial peptides. We identify plasmids and prophages across isolates and uncover extensive prophage diversity structured mainly by host taxonomy. Analysis of >80,000 biosynthetic gene clusters reveals that horizontal gene transfer and gene loss shape secondary metabolite repertoire across taxa. Our observations illustrate the essential role of and need for high-quality isolate genome sequences.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

The role of zinc in the adaptive evolution of polar phytoplankton

Zinc is an essential trace metal for oceanic primary producers with the highest concentrations in polar oceans. However, its role in the biological functioning and adaptive evolution of polar phytoplankton remains enigmatic. Here, we have applied a combination of evolutionary genomics, quantitative proteomics, co-expression analyses and cellular physiology to suggest that model polar phytoplankton species have a higher demand for zinc because of elevated cellular levels of zinc-binding proteins. We propose that adaptive expansion of regulatory zinc-finger protein families, co-expanded and co-expressed zinc-binding proteins families involved in photosynthesis and growth in these microalgal species and their natural communities were identified to be responsible for the higher zinc demand. The expression of their encoding genes in eukaryotic phytoplankton metatranscriptomes from pole-to-pole was identified to correlate not only with dissolved zinc concentrations in the upper ocean but also with temperature, suggesting that environmental conditions of polar oceans are responsible for an increased demand of zinc. Furthermore, these results suggest that zinc plays an important role in supporting photosynthetic growth in eukaryotic polar phytoplankton and that this has been critical for algal colonization of low-temperature polar oceans.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Deeplasmid: deep learning accurately separates plasmids from bacterial chromosomes

Plasmids are mobile genetic elements that play a key role in microbial ecology and evolution by mediating horizontal transfer of important genes, such as antimicrobial resistance genes. Many microbial genomes have been sequenced by short read sequencers and have resulted in a mix of contigs that derive from plasmids or chromosomes. New tools that accurately identify plasmids are needed to elucidate new plasmid-borne genes of high biological importance. We have developed Deeplasmid, a deep learning tool for distinguishing plasmids from bacterial chromosomes based on the DNA sequence and its encoded biological data. It requires as input only assembled sequences generated by any sequencing platform and assembly algorithm and its runtime scales linearly with the number of assembled sequences. Deeplasmid achieves an AUC–ROC of over 89%, and it was more accurate than five other plasmid classification methods. Finally, as a proof of concept, we used Deeplasmid to predict new plasmids in the fish pathogen Yersinia ruckeri ATCC 29473 that has no annotated plasmids. Deeplasmid predicted with high reliability that a long assembled contig is part of a plasmid. Using long read sequencing we indeed validated the existence of a 102 kb long plasmid, demonstrating Deeplasmid's ability to detect novel plasmids.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

The biogeographic differentiation of algal microbiomes in the upper ocean from pole to pole

Eukaryotic phytoplankton are responsible for at least 20% of annual global carbon fixation. Their diversity and activity are shaped by interactions with prokaryotes as part of complex microbiomes. Although differences in their local species diversity have been estimated, we still have a limited understanding of environmental conditions responsible for compositional differences between local species communities on a large scale from pole to pole. Here, we show, based on pole-to-pole phytoplankton metatranscriptomes and microbial rDNA sequencing, that environmental differences between polar and non-polar upper oceans most strongly impact the large-scale spatial pattern of biodiversity and gene activity in algal microbiomes. The geographic differentiation of co-occurring microbes in algal microbiomes can be well explained by the latitudinal temperature gradient and associated break points in their beta diversity, with an average breakpoint at 14 °C ± 4.3, separating cold and warm upper oceans. As global warming impacts upper ocean temperatures, we project that break points of beta diversity move markedly pole-wards. Hence, abrupt regime shifts in algal microbiomes could be caused by anthropogenic climate change.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Metagenomic compendium of 189,680 DNA viruses from the human gut microbiome

Bacteriophages have important roles in the ecology of the human gut microbiome but are under-represented in reference databases. To address this problem, we assembled the Metagenomic Gut Virus catalogue that comprises 189,680 viral genomes from 11,810 publicly available human stool metagenomes. Over 75% of genomes represent double-stranded DNA phages that infect members of the Bacteroidia and Clostridia classes. Based on sequence clustering we identified 54,118 candidate viral species, 92% of which were not found in existing databases. The Metagenomic Gut Virus catalogue improves detection of viruses in stool metagenomes and accounts for nearly 40% of CRISPR spacers found in human gut Bacteria and Archaea. We also produced a catalogue of 459,375 viral protein clusters to explore the functional potential of the gut virome. This revealed tens of thousands of diversity-generating retroelements, which use error-prone reverse transcription to mutate target genes and may be involved in the molecular arms race between phages and their bacterial hosts.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Metagenome Sequencing to Explore Phylogenomics of Terrestrial Cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria are ubiquitous microorganisms with crucial ecosystem functions, yet most knowledge of their biology is from aquatic taxa. We have constructed metagenomes for 50 taxonomically well-characterized terrestrial cyanobacterial cultures. These data will support phylogenomic studies of evolutionary relationships and gene content among these unique algae and their aquatic relatives.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

DOE JGI Metagenome Workflow

The DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) Metagenome Workflow performs metagenome data processing, including assembly; structural, functional, and taxonomic annotation; and binning of metagenomic data sets that are subsequently included into the Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomes (IMG/M) (I.-M. A. Chen, K. Chu, K. Palaniappan, A. Ratner, et al., Nucleic Acids Res, 49:D751–D763, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa939) comparative analysis system and provided for download via the JGI data portal (https://genome.jgi.doe.gov/portal/). This workflow scales to run on thousands of metagenome samples per year, which can vary by the complexity of microbial communities and sequencing depth. Here, we describe the different tools, databases, and parameters used at different steps of the workflow to help with the interpretation of metagenome data available in IMG and to enable researchers to apply this workflow to their own data. We use 20 publicly available sediment metagenomes to illustrate the computing requirements for the different steps and highlight the typical results of data processing. The workflow modules for read filtering and metagenome assembly are available as a workflow description language (WDL) file (https://code.jgi.doe.gov/BFoster/jgi_meta_wdl). The workflow modules for annotation and binning are provided as a service to the user community at https://img.jgi.doe.gov/submit and require filling out the project and associated metadata descriptions in the Genomes OnLine Database (GOLD) (S. Mukherjee, D. Stamatis, J. Bertsch, G. Ovchinnikova, et al., Nucleic Acids Res, 49:D723–D733, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa983).

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗