Functional annotation of the transcription factors from Methylotuvimicrobium alcaliphilum 20ZR

Semyon K. Kolmykov¹, Nikita V. Ivanisenko², Ivan S. Evshin³, Mikhail Kulyashov⁴, Tamara M. Khlebodarova⁵, Ilya R. Akberdin^6
1Institute of Computational Technologies SB RAS, kolmykovsk@gmail.com
²FRC Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS, n.ivanisenko@gmail.com
³Institute of Computational Technologies SB RAS, ivan@biosoft.ru
⁴Institute of Computational Technologies SB RAS, m.kulyashov@mail.ru
⁵FRC Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS, tamara@bionet.nsc.ru
⁶FRC Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS, akberdinir@gmail.com

Methane is a promising carbon source for biosynthesis of biotechnologically useful compounds using aerobic methanotrophic bacteria as biocatalysts. Despite more than a century-long history of discovering and studying of methanotrophic microorganisms, knowledge of the molecular mechanisms of gene expression regulation by transcription factors in these bacteria is very limited with only a few isolated cases being published. Therefore, the identification of potential transcription factors for methanotrophic organisms and their target genes is not only a foreground fundamental problem in the research field of methanotrophy, but it is also especially relevant for the active development of biotechnological application of methane-oxidizing microorganisms. In this study a comparative genomics approach together with the structural modeling techniques were applied to reveal the TFs in the 20ZR genome and predict their target regulatory genes.