De novo prediction of the genomic components and capabilities for microbial plant biomass degradation from (meta-)genomes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Understanding the biological mechanisms used by microorganisms for plant biomass degradation is of considerable biotechnological interest. Despite of the growing number of sequenced (meta)genomes of plant biomass-degrading microbes, there is currently no technique for the systematic determination of the genomic components of this process from these data.

Results

We describe a computational method for the discovery of the protein domains and CAZy families involved in microbial plant biomass degradation. Our method furthermore accurately predicts the capability to degrade plant biomass for microbial species from their genome sequences. Application to a large, manually curated data set of microbial degraders and non-degraders identified gene families of enzymes known

SUBMITTER: Weimann A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3585893 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature