Genome Sequence of the Nonconventional Wine Yeast Hanseniaspora guilliermondii UTAD222.

In this work, we disclose the genome sequence and a corresponding manually curated annotation of the non-Saccharomyces yeast Hanseniaspora guilliermondii UTAD222, a strain shown to have interesting oenological traits for the production of wines with improved aromatic properties.

GENOME ANNOUNCEMENT

Non-Saccharomyces yeasts have several interesting metabolic and enzymatic properties that are absent in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and that contribute to the improvement of wine sensory profiles (1–4). Species of the Hanseniaspora genus are among those found to be more interesting for the production of wines with stylistic properties in coculture with S. cerevisiae. In this work, we have sequenced the genome of Hanseniaspora guilliermondii UTAD222, a strain that was isolated from a wine must and that was found to have multiple interesting oenological traits, including high tolerance to ethanol, low production of H2S, and high proteolytic and β-glycosidase activities (1, 5). Coculture of H. guilliermondii UTAD222 with S. cerevisiae also significantly enhanced the floral and the fruity character of wines (6), and led to a significant remodeling of S. cerevisiae genomic expression along alcoholic fermentation (7). Other genomic sequences of Hanseniaspora wine strains were released including H. opuntiae, H. uvarum, H. vinae, and H. osmophila (BioProjects PRJNA325557, PRJNA238564, and PRJNA178141) (8), but this is the first description of a whole-genome of an H. guilliermondii strain.

The genome of H. guilliermondii UTAD222 was obtained using two rounds of paired-end sequencing using Illumina MiSeq platform (inserts with approximately 300 bp). Around 53,913,308 reads were obtained, which were assembled (using a CLC de novo assembler) into 208 contigs (N50 length, 91,417 bp), yielding a total of 9,037,850 assembled bases and a coverage of 819-fold. The predicted H. guilliermondii UTAD222 genome size and corresponding G+C content (approximately 31%) are in line with the genome sizes reported for other wine strains belonging to the Hanseniaspora genus.

Automatic annotation of the genome sequence of H. guilliermondii UTAD222 (undertaken using ab initio gene detection) was manually curated to validate and refine the results obtained. The predicted ORFeome of H. guilliermondii UTAD222 is estimated to include 4,070 protein-encoding genes. BLASTP analysis revealed that the majority of H. guilliermondii proteins share a high degree of similarity with proteins from H. opuntiae AWRI3578 (n = 4,026) and from H. uvarum AWRI3580 (n = 3,918), reflecting the reported close phylogenetic distance between H. guilliermondii and these two species (9). Despite this generalized similarity, H. guilliermondii UTAD222 and H. uvarum AWRI3580 strains were found to share three proteins that were absent in H. opuntiae AWRI3578. On the other hand, four genes were shared by H. guilliermondii UTAD222 and H. opuntiae AWRI3578 but were absent in H. uvarum. The disclosure of the H. guilliermondii genome sequence is expected to boost research focused on this species and on others belonging to the Hanseniaspora genus, helping to further understand their role in wine fermentation when cocultured with S. cerevisiae.

Accession number(s).

The genome sequence of the H. guilliermondii UTAD222 sequence has been deposited in ENA (accession numbers FQNF01000001 to FQNF01000208).