ABSTRACT
In 2011, the Association of Analytical Communities (AOAC) International released a list of Bacillus strains relevant to biothreat molecular detection assays. We present the complete and annotated genome assemblies for the 15 strains listed on the inclusivity panel, as well as the 20 strains listed on the exclusivity panel.
GENOME ANNOUNCEMENT
For several years the idea that biothreat and contamination detection methods need to be better characterized has been discussed (1–3). This led the Association of Analytical Communities (AOAC) International to compose a bacterial strain list for evaluation when designing molecular detection assays. This list, termed the Stakeholder Panel on Agent Detection Assays (SPADA), includes 15 inclusivity and 20 exclusivity Bacillus strains (4). As testing pertaining to these strains involves nucleic acid analyses, complete genome assemblies can further improve assays confidence, a major issue in both positive and negative results (5). Here, we describe complete genomes for all 35 strains.
Each microbial isolate genome was assembled using at least two data sets (specific data types and coverages are listed in the NCBI records): Illumina (short- and/or long-insert paired data), Roche 454 (long-insert paired data), and PacBio long reads. Short- and long-insert paired data were assembled in both Newbler and Velvet and computationally shredded into 1.5-kbp overlapping shreds. If PacBio coverage was 100× or greater, the data were assembled using PacBio's Hierarchical Genome Assembly Process (HGAP) (6), all data were additionally assembled together in Allpaths (7). Consensus sequences from HGAP and Allpaths were computationally shredded into 10-kbp overlapping pieces. All shreds were integrated using Phrap. Possible misassemblies were corrected and repeat regions verified using in-house scripts and Consed for manual editing (8–10). All but one of the genomes were assembled into finished-quality complete genomes (11). Each genome assembly was annotated using an Ergatis-based (12) workflow with minor manual curation.
Genome assemblies range from 3.4 to 6.7 Mb (Table 1; smallest B. coagulans DSM 1 and largest B. thuringiensis subsp. Morrisoni HD 600) with up to 14 plasmids (mean, 2.9 ± 0.5) and G+C contents of 33 to 47% (only B. coagulans DSM 1 has a G+C content greater than 40%).
Bacillus genomesa
Nucleotide sequence accession numbers.Accession numbers for all 35 genomes are listed in Table 1.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Funding for this effort was provided by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Joint Science and Technology Office (DTRA J9-CB/JSTO) and Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, award HSHQDC-08-X-00790.
This manuscript is approved by LANL for unlimited release (LA-UR-14-29607).
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
Bacterial strains were obtained from the Department of Defense's Unified Culture Collection (http://www.usamriid.army.mil/ucc/).
FOOTNOTES
- Received 5 February 2015.
- Accepted 4 March 2015.
- Published 30 April 2015.
- Copyright © 2015 Johnson et al.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
