Project description:Several microorganisms have wide temperature growth range and versatility to tolerate large thermal fluctuations in diverse environments. To better understand thermal adaptation of psychrotrophs, Exiguobacterium sibiricum strain 255-15 was used, a psychrotrophic bacterium that grows from -5°C to 39°C. Its genome is approximately 3 Mb in size, has a GC content of 47.7% and includes 2,978 putative protein-encoding genes (CDS). The genome and transcriptome analysis along with the organism's known physiology was used to better understand its thermal adaptation. A total of about 27%, 3.2% and 5.2% of E. sibiricum strain 255-15 CDS spotted on the DNA microarray yielded differentially expressed genes in cells grown at -2.5°C, 10°C and 39°C, respectively, when compared to cells grown at 28°C. The hypothetical and unknown genes represented 10.6%, 0.89% and 2.3% of the CDS differentially expressed when grown at -2.5°C, 10°C and 39°C versus 28°C. The transcriptome analyses showed that E. sibiricum is constitutively adapted to cold temperatures since little differential gene expression was observed at growth temperatures of 10°C and 28°C, but at the extremities of its Arrhenius growth profile, namely -2.5°C and 39°C, much more differential gene expression occurred. The genes that responded were more typically associated with stress response. Keywords: stress response to cold and hot temperatures
