Streptococcus thermophilus DGCC 7710 Genome sequencing and assembly. Streptococcus thermophilus DGCC 7710

Streptococcus thermophilus is a food-grade lactic acid bacterium widely used in industrial fermentations for the production of dairy products such as yogurt and various cheeses (cheddar, mozzarella, emmental, pizza cheese...). Originally selected for its outstanding functional properties -short generation time, fast milk acidification, casein proteolysis, exopolysaccharide production, natural competence, and robustness to bacteriophage infection- S. thermophilus DGCC7710 (a.k.a. RD534) has become a model organism for the study of multiple CRISPR-Cas systems. CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) loci are usually flanked by a heterogenous set of cas (CRISPR-associated) genes that together provide acquired immunity against invasive nucleic acids such as viruses and plasmids. While three types (I, II, III) of CRISPR-Cas systems have been defined throughout the bacterial and archaeal domains, DGCC7710 is a rare strain which has been shown to contain at least one system of each type: type I-E (CRISPR4), type II-A (CRISPR1 and CRISPR3), and type III-A (CRISPR2).