Draft Genome Sequence of Blautia faecis Strain Marseille-P328, Isolated from the Human Ascending Colon.

Blautia faecis strain Marseille P328 was isolated from the ascending colon of a French patient. We sequenced the 4.45-Mb genome of the strain and compared it with that of other species of the Blautia genus.

GENOME ANNOUNCEMENT

The Blautia genus was created in 2008 after the description of B. wexlerae and the reclassification among this genus of species previously classified as Clostridium (C. coccoides) and Ruminococcus (R. luti, R. schinkii, R. hansenii, R. productus, and R. hydrogenotrophicus) (1). Species of this genus are Gram positive, coccoid or oval-shaped, and strictly anaerobic bacteria normally found in human stool samples. Blautia species are part of the human healthy mature anaerobic gut microbiota (2, 3). Three new Blautia species (B. faecis, B. stercoris, and B. glucerasea) were then discovered, and another Ruminococcus species (R. obeum) was moved to this genus, bringing the total number of Blautia species to 11 (4–7). Strain Marseille-P328 was isolated from the ascending colon of a 63-year-old French male who underwent upper and lower endoscopy during his hospitalization at La Timone Hospital, Marseilles, France, in July 2014. Prior approval has been obtained from our institutional review board for this study. Strain Marseille-P328 was identified at the species level as Blautia faecis on the basis of a 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of 99.68% (1,258/1,262 bp) with Blautia faecis strain M25T (accession no. NR_109014.1). B. faecis strain Marseille-P328 was deposited in the CSUR collection under number CSUR P328.

Genomic DNA was isolated from Blautia faecis strain Marseille-P328 and cultured on 5% sheep blood-enriched Columbia agar at 37°C in an anaerobic atmosphere. Blautia faecis strain Marseille-P328 genomic DNA was sequenced using the MiSeq technology with the mate-pair strategy (Illumina, Inc., San Diego, CA, USA). The 852,045 paired reads were automatically trimmed by the Illumina MiSeq software and then assembled into scaffolds using Velvet (8). The resultant genome was 4,454,129 bp long and was composed of 19 scaffolds and 28 contigs. The G+C content was 42.94%. Genome annotation was performed as previously described (9).

The sequenced genome contained 3,969 protein-coding genes and a minimum of 80 predicted RNAs, including seven 5S rRNAs, five 16S rRNAs, two 23S rRNAs, and 66 tRNAs. A total of 3,057 identified genes were assigned putative functions (by COGs or by NR blast). One hundred seventy-nine genes were identified as ORFans (4.51%). The remaining genes were annotated as hypothetical proteins (638 genes [16.07%]). The resulting coding capacity was estimated at 3,852,314 bp (86.4% of the total genome).

Then, the B. faecis Marseille-P328 genome was incorporated into in silico DNA-DNA hybridization and tested against all the Blautia genus NCBI available reference genomes. DDH values were estimated using the GGDC online version 2.1 (http://ggdc.dsmz.de/distcalc2.php). This analysis yielded 29.7% ± 2.45% similarity with Blautia wexlerae (accession no. AXVN00000000), 33.3% ± 2.45% with Blautia obeum (accession no. AAVO00000000), 25.3% ± 2.40% with Blautia hansenii (accession no. ABYU00000000), 21.9% ± 2.35% with Blautia schinkii (accession no. JNKJ00000000), 21.2% ± 2.35% with Blautia hydrogenotrophica (accession no. ACBZ00000000), 22.1% ± 2.35% with Blautia producta (accession no. ARET00000000), 28.00% ± 2.40% with Ruminococcus gnavus (accession no. JAGQ00000000), 34.4% ± 2.45% with Ruminococcus torques (accession no. AAVP00000000), and a 31.6% ± 2.45% with Blautia coccoides (accession no. BAHT00000000).

Accession number(s).

The 16S rRNA gene and genome sequences from B. faecis strain Marseille-P328 (= CSUR P328) were deposited in EMBL-EBI under numbers LT223578 and FLKC00000000, respectively.