Research team first to fully sequence bacterial genome important to fuel and chemical production

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are the first team to sequence the entire genome of the Clostridium autoethanogenum bacterium, which is used to sustainably produce fuel and chemicals from a range of raw materials, including gases derived from biomass and industrial wastes.

The ORNL work was funded by LanzaTech, a biotechnology company based in Illinois with an innovative carbon recycling process. LanzaTech's gas fermentation platform uses proprietary microbes for efficiently converting carbon-rich waste gases and residues into useful fuels and chemicals.

"With the complete genomic sequence, we will have a better understanding of the microbe's metabolism and mutations that will enable LanzaTech to make modifications to the wild-type, or naturally occurring, strain for optimizing the conversion of waste into fuel," said Steve Brown. "Our ORNL lab has a lot of experience sequencing genomes, and we have the analytic capability to tackle this project."

The research team sequenced the more than 4.3 million base pairs of DNA that make up the organism's genome using RS-II long-read sequencing technology developed by Pacific Biosciences (PacBio). "In our paper we compared three generations of sequencing technologies and explained why the long-read technology was able to finish the genome," Brown said. "Now, ORNL is independently looking at six different organisms using PacBio to compare and contrast experiences using this technology."