Heliorestis convoluta strain:HH Genome sequencing and assembly. Heliorestis convoluta strain:HH

Heliorestis convoluta is an anaerobic, anoxygenic photoheterotrophic bacterium isolated from an Egyptian soda lake. Even with significant interest and past work to elucidate the phylogeny and photochemistry of species in the family Heliobacteriaceae, genomic analyses of heliobacteria have been minimal with only one published genome to date, Heliobacterium modesticaldum. This project describes the complete genomic analysis of a second member of the heliobacteria, H. convoluta, an alkaliphilic and morphologically distinct species of the family. Lacking any plasmids, the genome of H. convoluta is a circular chromosome (3.22 Mb) with a 43.1% guanine + cytosine (GC) content and 3,268 open reading frames. Comparative analysis between the genomes of H. modesticaldum and H. convoluta reveals variances between key proteins, which is believed to contribute to the ability for each species to exhibit distinct extremophilic properties.