title: High correlation between genotypes and phenotypes of environmental bacteria Comamonas testosteroni strains.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Members of Comamonas testosteroni are environmental microorganisms that are usually found in polluted environment samples. They utilize steroids and aromatic compounds but rarely sugars, and show resistance to multiple heavy metals and multiple drugs. However, comprehensive genomic analysis among the C. testosteroni strains is lacked.
  
  
  RESULTS
  To understand the genome bases of the features of C. testosteroni, we sequenced 10 strains of this species and analyzed them together with other related published genome sequences. The results revealed that: 1) the strains of C. testosteroni have genome sizes ranging from 5.1 to 6.0 Mb and G + C contents ranging from 61.1% to 61.8%. The pan-genome contained 10,165 gene families and the core genome contained 3,599 gene families. Heap's law analysis indicated that the pan-genome of C. testosteroni may be open (α = 0.639); 2) by analyzing 31 phenotypes of 11 available C. testosteroni strains, 99.4% of the genotypes (putative genes) were found to be correlated to the phenotypes, indicating a high correlation between phenotypes and genotypes; 3) gene clusters for nitrate reduction, steroids degradation and metal and multi-drug resistance were found and were highly conserved among all the genomes of this species; 4) the genome similarity of C. testosteroni may be related to the geographical distances.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This work provided an overview on the genomes of C. testosteroni and new genome resources that would accelerate the further investigations of this species. Importantly, this work focused on the analysis of potential genetic determinants for the typical characters and found high correlation between the phenotypes and their corresponding genotypes.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology and College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, People's Republic of China. liulinddlk@webmail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology and College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, People's Republic of China. cmzhu19@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Wentao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology and College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, People's Republic of China. caozhan1987@163.com.
authors.forename: Zhan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology and College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, People's Republic of China. 525613594@qq.com.
authors.forename: Biao
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology and College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, People's Republic of China. mzluo@mail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Gejiao
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology and College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, People's Republic of China. gejiao@mail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Meizhong
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D020604:Comamonas testosteroni / Q000235:genetics*; D004777:Environment; D056726:Genetic Association Studies; D016680:Genome, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics*