In Silico Screening of Bacteriocin Gene Clusters within a Set of Marine <i>Bacillota</i> Genomes

Due to their potential application as an alternative to antibiotics, bacteriocins, which are ribosomally synthesized antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria, have received much attention in recent years. To identify bacteriocins within marine bacteria, most of the studies employed a culture-base...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rabeb Teber, Shuichi Asakawa
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-02-01
Series:International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/25/5/2566
Description
Summary:Due to their potential application as an alternative to antibiotics, bacteriocins, which are ribosomally synthesized antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria, have received much attention in recent years. To identify bacteriocins within marine bacteria, most of the studies employed a culture-based method, which is more time-consuming than the in silico approach. For that, the aim of this study was to identify potential bacteriocin gene clusters and their potential producers in 51 marine <i>Bacillota</i> (formerly <i>Firmicutes</i>) genomes, using BAGEL4, a bacteriocin genome mining tool. As a result, we found out that a majority of selected <i>Bacillota</i> (60.78%) are potential bacteriocin producers, and we identified 77 bacteriocin gene clusters, most of which belong to class I bacteriocins known as RiPPs (ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides). The identified putative bacteriocin gene clusters are an attractive target for further in vitro research, such as the production of bacteriocins using a heterologous expression system.
ISSN:1661-6596
1422-0067