title: Insights of biosurfactant producing Serratia marcescens strain W2.3 isolated from diseased tilapia fish: a draft genome analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Serratia marcescens is an opportunistic bacterial pathogen with broad range of host ranging from vertebrates, invertebrates and plants. S. marcescens strain W2.3 was isolated from a diseased tilapia fish and it was suspected to be the causal agent for the fish disease as virulence genes were found within its genome. In this study, for the first time, the genome sequences of S. marcescens strain W2.3 were sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq platform.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Several virulent factors of S. marcescens such as serrawettin, a biosurfactant, has been reported to be regulated by N-acyl homoserine lactone (AHL)-based quorum sensing (QS). In our previous studies, an unusual AHL with long acyl side chain was detected from this isolate suggesting the possibility of novel virulence factors regulation. This evokes our interest in the genome of this bacterial strain and hereby we present the draft genome of S. marcescens W2.3, which carries the serrawettin production gene, swrA and the AHL-based QS transcriptional regulator gene, luxR which is an orphan luxR.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  With the availability of the whole genome sequences of S. marcescens W2.3, this will pave the way for the study of the QS-mediated genes expression in this bacterium.
authors.forename: Xin Yue
authors.initials: XY
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: Chien Yi
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Kar Wai
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: Kok Keng
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Tee
authors.forename: Wai Fong
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: Division of Genetics and Molecular Biology, Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia. kokgan@um.edu.my.
authors.forename: Kok Gan
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Chan