ABSTRACT

We report here the draft genome sequence of a Staphylococcus lentus isolate, 050AP, collected in Tanzania from a swab of healthy bovine perineum. The draft genome sequence contained 2.72 Mbp and 2,750 coding sequences with a G+C content of 31.7%.

GENOME ANNOUNCEMENT

Staphylococcus lentus is a member of the Staphylococcus sciuri group which also comprises S. sciuri, Staphylococcus vitulinus, Staphylococcus fleurettii, and Staphylococcus stepanovicii (1, 2). This group is part of the normal skin and mucosal flora in a wide range of animals, and while not frequently associated with disease, members of the S. sciuri group have been isolated from various human and veterinary infections (1, 2). They have furthermore been implicated as a reservoir for virulence and resistance gene exchange with other staphylococci (2). In this study an isolate of S. lentus, 050AP, collected from a perineum swab of a healthy Friesian-Jersey mixed breed dairy cow in Nyakato, Tanzania in April 2014 was genome sequenced using an Illumina HiSeq 2000. To our knowledge this is the first veterinary S. lentus genome to be reported.
Genome assembly was performed using Velvet software (3), and resulted in an assembly consisting of 37 contigs with a N50 of 119,892 bp which was automatically annotated using Prokka (4). The resultant 050AP draft genome was 2,719,515 bp with a G+C content of 31.7% and contained 2,750 predicted protein-coding sequences. The macrolide resistance gene mph(C) and tetracycline resistance gene tet(K) were identified by ResFinder version 2.1 (5). In the case of mph(C) (locus tag: SAMEA3109314_01885) the best full length BLAST match in the nucleotide collection is a 91.9% identify match to mph(C) in Staphylococcus aureus (CP017097.1). Thus, 050AP appears to encode a novel mph(C) variant which may be the same or related to a variant reported as partial coding sequences in S. lentus from free-living small mammals in Poland (6). A single nucleotide deletion causes a frameshift mutation in tet(K) leading to a predicted protein of at least 419 amino acids versus the typical 296 amino acids. However, with the gene located at the end of a contig the exact size of tet(K) in 050AP is uncertain from these sequence data. Phenotypically 050AP was resistant to erythromycin, clindamycin, tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, fusidic acid, oxacillin, and trimethoprim as assessed by Vitek-2 using card AST-P620 (bioMérieux, Basingstoke, United Kingdom) but susceptible to cefoxitin (screen), chloramphenicol, daptomycin, gentamicin, linezolid, mupirocin, penicillin, teicoplanin, tigecycline, and vancomycin. The availability of this genome for comparative analysis with other staphylococcal genomes will provide insights into the biology of the S. sciuri group and their role as commensals and pathogens.