Bacterial genomic comparison of Inositol metabolism pathway

[[abstract]]The capabilities to assimilate different kinds of carbon source are often used for bacterial isolation and characterization. Myo-inositol is abundant in soil. Bacillus subtiis and several microorganisms can grow on inositol as the sole carbon source. The io1ABCDEFGHIJ and iolRS operons are known to be involved in inositol utilization and regulation in B. subtilis,respectively .A functional myo-inositol dehydrogenase gene is required for efficient nitrogen fixation of Sinorhizobium meliloti. However, most other microbes cannot use inositol as a source of energy for growth. In this thesis, the lol genes were analyzed and compared between different bacterial species using comparative genomic approach. The metabolism pathway and genomic sequences of genes involved in inositol metabolic pathway of eighteen species of bacteria was retrieved from NCBI and KEGG database. Using tools in Vector NTI, the genomic maps were constructed and compared. The Blast tool in NCBI was applied for homologous genes search. The functional domain of each protein was analyzed using CDD tool in NCBI. Homologous domain sequences were aligned by Multialin tool and a logo of each domain was drawn by Seqlogo. Phylogenetic analysis of each domain was carried out using tools in ClustaiX with bootstrap randomization. The phylogenetic trees were visualized by treeView. Our results demonstrated that an intact iol operon was found only in a few species, and a major deletion, duplication and genomic rearrangement were observed in different genomes