Complete Genome Sequences of One Salt-Tolerant and Petroleum Hydrocarbon-Emulsifying Terribacillus saccharophilus Strain ZY-1

Abstract

Salt tolerance is one of the most important problems in the field of environmental governance and restoration. Among the various sources of factors, except temperature, salinity is a key factor that interrupts bacterial growth significantly. In this regard, constant efforts are made for the development of salt-tolerant strains, but few strains with salt tolerance, such as Terribacillus saccharophilus, were found, and there are still few relevant reports about their salt tolerance from complete genomic analysis. Furthermore, with the development of the economy, environmental pollution caused by oil exploitation has attracted much attention, so it is crucial to find the bacteria from T. saccharophilus which could degrade petroleum hydrocarbon even under high-salt conditions. Herein, one T. saccharophilus strain named ZY-1 with salt tolerance was isolated by increasing the salinity on LB medium step by step with reservoir water as the bacterial source. Its complete genome was sequenced, which was the first report of the complete genome for T. saccharophilus species with petroleum hydrocarbon degradation and emulsifying properties. In addition, its genome sequences were compared with the other five strains that are from the same genus level. The results indicated that there really exist some differences among them. In addition, some characteristics were studied. The salt-tolerant strain ZY-1 developed in this study and its emulsification and degradation performance of petroleum hydrocarbons were studied, which is expected to widely broaden the research scope of petroleum hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria in the oil field environment even in the extreme environment. The experiments verified that ZY-1 could significantly grow not only in the salt field but also in the oil field environment. It also demonstrated that the developed salt-tolerant strain can be applied in the petroleum hydrocarbon pollution field for bioremediation. In addition, we expect that the identified variants which occurred specifically in the high-salt strain will enhance the molecular biological understanding and be broadly applied to the biological engineering field.

Keywords: Terribacillus saccharophilus; comparative genomics; complete genome; salt-tolerant; strain ZY-1.