Candidatus Spirobacillus cienkowskii - Genome sequencing and assembly

The Candidatus Spirobacillus cienkowskii is a deep-branching uncultivated Deltaproteobacteria and is a pathogen of small crustaceans, including freshwater daphniids, which are important food web sources in aquatic environments (Tessier, A. & Woodruff, P., 2002). The main phenotypic characteristic associated with infection is the red-pink color caused by the carotenoids produced by S. cienkowskii in hemolymph (Green, J., 1959). Here, we used high-throughput sequencing and computational binning approaches to assemble and reconstruct the genome of Candidatus Spirobacillus cienkowskii, previously described only through 16S rRNA and DNA primase gene sequences, from the hemolymph of infected Daphnia magna (Rodrigues et al., 2008).