A database of sequenced genomes of different Streptomyces albus J1074 strains and uses thereof

Streptomyces albus J1074 has recently emerged as a powerful chassis strain for natural product research and discovery, as well as model to investigate various aspects of actinobacterial biology. A number of genetic tools have been developed to facilitate the use of this strain for the aforementioned purposes. One of the promising approaches is to introduce into J1074 genome mutations that would improve the antibiotic-producing capacity of J1074. Particularly, we reported a collection of spontaneous and genomically engineered J1074 mutants carrying mutation in genes for ribosomal protein S12, RNA polymerase beta subunit etc. We took advantage of this collection to build an in-house database which would host (both current and future) the primary and curated sequencing data for these mutants. The database is available at https://biotools.online/media/. The main benefits of the database lie in the known pedigree of the strains, which allows deep interpretation of the data. For example, there is lively – and unresolved – debate on the origins and consequences of the GC composition in actinobacteria. A better understanding of this issue should improve our knowledge of genome evolution in bacteria and will have a number of biotechnological ramifications. We used our Streptomyces albus J1074 dataset as an experimental model to reveal genome-wide spectrum of mutation, which appears to be biased towards elevated GC content. We also included the high-quality genomes of the other streptomycetes into our databse for comparative purposes. The genomic GC content in streptomycetes varies from 75 % to 66.5 %, with median value being 72 %. The GC content of secondary metabolic genes of S. coelicolor is less variable than that of primary metabolic genes, an indicative of different selection pressure on these gene groups. Along with selective constraints, the peculiarities of Streptomyces DNA mismatch repair might contribute to the skewed GC content of their genomes. Further uses of the database may include the development of a more precise knowledge of the mutation rate as well as population genetic processes within this species and genus.