Sequencing the largest existing collection of historic commercial solventogenic clostridia strains to dissect industrial acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentations

The David T. Jones collection of clostridia dates back to 1944 and contains over 300 unique strains used in various commercial operations, including the South African ABE fermentation process at National Chemical Products... [ view full abstract ]

The David T. Jones collection of clostridia dates back to 1944 and contains over 300 unique strains used in various commercial operations, including the South African ABE fermentation process at National Chemical Products (NCP). The collection includes some of the earliest spore stocks sent from both Commercial Solvents Corporation (CSC, USA) and Commercial Solvents Great Britain (CS-GB, UK) and comprises of mainly Clostridium acetobutylicum, C. beijerinckii, C. saccherobutylicum and C. saccheroperbutylacetonicum strains. The collection also includes strains from Japanese and Taiwanese commercial operations as well as strains for various research labs. The collection also includes a number of strains resulting from research into solving specific problems such as phage infections or lower solvent yield when the characteristics of the molasses changed on an annual basis. In collaboration with the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI), this historic collection of commercial solventogenic clostridia are having their genome sequences determined and analyzed. To date, the genomes for one Clostridium acetobutylicum, 18 Clostridium beijerinckii, two Clostridium butyricum, four Clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum and one Clostridium tetanomorphum have been sequenced using PacBio single molecule sequencing resulting in between 1-7 contigs per genome. Among the Clostridium beijerinckii strains, genome sizes range between 5.6 and 6.5 Mb, the number of predicted gene models range from 5,058 to 5,966 and 16S rDNA copy numbers are between 14 and 21 per genome. An overview of the project will be presented and initial sequence data will be discussed.