Journal of Biotechnology 216 (2015) 149–150 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Biotechnology j ourna l ho me page: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbiotec Genome announcement Complete genome sequence of Microbacterium sp. CGR1, bacterium tolerant to wide abiotic conditions isolated from the Atacama Desert Dinka Mandakovic a,b,1 , Pablo Cabrera a,b,1 , Rodrigo Pulgar a,b , Jonathan Maldonado a,b , Pamela Aravena a,b , Mauricio Latorre a,b , Verónica Cambiazo a,b , Mauricio González a,b,∗ a Laboratorio de Bioinformática y Expresión Génica, INTA—Universidad de Chile, El Líbano 5524 Santiago, Chile b Fondap Center for Genome Regulation (CGR), Avenida Blanco Encalada 2085 Santiago, Chile a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 14 October 2015 Accepted 22 October 2015 Available online 29 October 2015 Keywords: Microbacterium Atacama Desert Abiotic factors tolerance Riboflavin Arsenic biosensor a b s t r a c t Microbacterium sp. CGR1 (RGM2230) is an isolate from the Atacama Desert that displays a wide pH, salinity and temperature tolerance. This strain exhibits riboflavin overproducer features and traits for developing an environmental arsenic biosensor. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of this strain, which represents the first genome of the genus Microbacterium sequenced and assembled in a single contig. The genome contains 3,634,864 bp, 3299 protein-coding genes, 45 tRNAs, six copies of 5S-16S-23S rRNA and a high genome average GC-content of 68.04%. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Bacteria isolated from extreme environments show remarkable tolerance to life-threatening conditions, making them important sources of prominent genes useful for biotechnological approaches. In this context, the Atacama Desert is especially attractive, since microorganism communities growing there are exposed to chal- lenging environmental conditions, such as extremely low water availability, nutrient-poor soils, extreme solar radiation, large tem- perature oscillations, elevated salinity and high levels of arsenic (Crits-Christoph et al., 2013; Smedley and Kinniburgh, 2002). Recently, we recovered 30 isolates with different morphologies and abiotic tolerant features from a pH and salinity gradient tran- sect located at 4480 m.a.s.l in the Atacama Desert, with ranging day/night temperatures from -3.9 ◦ C to 24.4 ◦ C. Among the isolates, a Gram positive, motile and yellow-intense pigmented bacterium, identified as a Microbacterium strain by 16S rDNA gene sequenc- ing, had one of the widest pH (5–12) and salinity (0–7%) tolerance ranges, and so it was selected for whole genome sequencing. This isolate was named Microbacterium sp. CGR1 (RGM2230). Genomic DNA from Microbacterium sp. CGR1 was purified from exponential growth cultures (1 mL, OD 600 :0.5) using the DNeasy Blood & Tissue Kit for DNA (Qiagen). Genome sequencing was ∗ Corresponding author at: Laboratorio de Bioinformática y Expresión Génica, INTA—Universidad de Chile, El Líbano 5524 Santiago, Chile. E-mail address: mgonzale@inta.uchile.cl (M. González). 1 These authors have contributed equally to this work. performed at GCB Genome Sequencing Shared Resource (Duke Uni- versity) using four single-molecule-real-time (SMRT) cells of the PacBio RSII (Pacific Biosciences, Menlo Park, CA) platform with a 15 kb to 20 kb insert library and XL/C2 chemistry, producing a total of 299,922 reads post-filter with mean read length of 12,794 bp, N50 size of 17,569 bp and a total of 3,837,473,443 bp. De novo assembly was conducted using HGAP version 3 (SMRT Analysis ver- sion 2.3) with default parameters (Chin et al., 2013), resulting in a complete contig of 3,634,864 bp with coverage of 717x, represent- ing the first genome of the genus Microbacterium assembled in a single contig. Microbacterium sp. CGR1 was annotated using the NCBI Prokary- otic Genome Annotation Pipeline released 2013 (Tatusova et al., 2013) and approved on August 11 th , 2015. We predicted 51 RNA genes (6 rRNA and 45 tRNA), a total of 3299 protein-coding genes and a high genome average GC-content of 68.04 mol% (see Table 1). The genome of Microbacterium sp. CGR1 revealed the presence of the complete set of genes for riboflavin biosynthesis. Riboflavin (vitamin B2) is a yellow water-soluble vitamin produced by all plants, fungi and many microorganisms, but not by higher animals including humans. Vitamin B2 is known to be the central compo- nent of the cofactor’s flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) and flavin mononucleotide (FMN), which are necessary to all flavoproteins. For this reason, riboflavin is required for a large variety of cellular processes. Traditional chemical synthesis of riboflavin is now being replaced by low cost and less energy wasting commercially com- petitive biotechnological processes that use ascomycetes Ashbya http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiotec.2015.10.020 0168-1656/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.