Genomic insights into secondary metabolism of the natural product-rich cyanobacterium Moorea bouillonii

Moorea bouillonii (formerly Lyngbya bouillonii), a marine filamentous cyanobacteria, is known to produce about 30 different natural products; however, the true natural product potential and life strategies of this Moorea strain remain poorly investigated. To further explore the natural product potential of a M. bouillonii strain and gain insights into other life history characteristics, we sequenced the genome of the type-strain, M. bouillonii PNG5–198 from Papua New Guinea. The 8.6 Mb genome was assembled using the newly developed SPAdes algorithm followed by error correction using the Bayes Hammer program. In addition to the already published Apratoxin A pathway, there is also a pathway consistent with lyngbyabellin A biosynthesis, another cytotoxic metabolite from this species. The biosynthetic pathway for lyngbyabellin A has significant similarity to the hectochlorin biosynthetic pathway found in a Caribbean cyanobacterial strain. A comparison of the M. producin 3L and the M. bouillonii genomes will also be presented. This project was funded from grants: NIH Grant 2R01 CA10887406 to W.H.G and L.G, and Russian megagrant to P.A.P.