Comparative genomics of the mesophilic cellulosome-producing Clostridium cellulovorans and its application to biofuel production via consolidated bioprocessing.

Clostridium cellulovorans is an anaerobic, mesophilic bacterium that efficiently degrades native substrates in soft biomass such as corn fibre and rice straw by producing an extracellular enzyme complex called the cellulosomes. By examining genome sequences from multiple Clostridium species, comparative genomics offers new insight into genome evolution and the way natural selection moulds functional DNA sequence evolution. Recently, we reported the whole genome sequence of C. cellulovorans. A total of 57 cellulosomal genes were found in the C. cellulovorans genome and coded for not only carbohydrate-active enzymes but also lipase, peptidase and proteinase inhibitors, in addition to two novel genes encoding scaffolding proteins CbpB and CbpC. Interestingly, the genome size of C. cellulovorans was about 1 Mbp larger than that of other cellulosome-producing clostridia: mesophilic C. cellulolyticum and thermophilic C. thermocellum. Since the C. cellulovorans genome included not only cellulosomal genes but also a large number of genes encoding non-cellulosomal enzymes, the genome expansion of C. cellulovorans included genes more related to degradation of polysaccharides, such as hemicelluloses and pectins, than to cellulose. In this review, we propose a strategy for industrial applications such as biofuel production using enhanced mesophilic cellulosome- and solvent-producing clostridia.