Whole-genome sequencing and functional analysis of a novel chitin-degrading strain Rhodococcus sp. 11-3

Chitin is the second most abundant polysaccharide in nature. Therefore, how to utilize the resource is an important issue. Rhodococcus sp. 11-3 is a strain with high chitin deacetylase (CDA) activity. In the present study, we used a combined Illumina and PacBio sequencing strategy to assemble the whole genome sequence of this strain. The genome of Rhodococcus sp. 11-3 was 5,627,661 bp in size and contained 5983 coding genes, of which 5983, 4040, 4648, 4914, 4174, 2350, and 173 genes were annotated in the Non-Redundant Protein Database (NR), Swiss-Prot, Pfam, Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COG), Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and Carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) databases, respectively. The genome was annotated to a chitin deacetylase gene (RhoCDA) and a chitinase gene (RhoChi). They were not very similar to the previously reported chitin deacetylase and chitinase. This made it possible to investigate the genes associated with chitin degradation and would provide an important reference for subsequent gene cloning, functional research, development and application. Therefore, the Rhodococcus sp. 11-3 strain has great potential in the development of chitin resources.