Genome Sequence of Enterobacter cloacae subsp. dissolvens SDM,
an Efficient Biomass-Utilizing Producer of Platform Chemical
2,3-Butanediol

Youqiang Xu,a Ailong Wang,a Fei Tao,b Fei Su,b Hongzhi Tang,b Cuiqing Ma,a and Ping Xua,b

State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, Jinan, People’s Republic of China,a and State Key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism, Shanghai Jiao
Tong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of Chinab

Enterobacter cloacae subsp. dissolvens SDM has an extraordinary characteristic of biomass utilization for 2,3-butanediol pro-
duction. Here we present a 4.9-Mb assembly of its genome. The key genes for regulation and metabolism of 2,3-butanediol pro-
duction were annotated, which could provide further insights into the molecular mechanism of high-yield production of
2,3-butanediol.

The energy crisis of recent years shows the shortage of nonre-newable resources such as crude oil (4, 13). With growing
demand for nonrenewable resources and their shortage, biological
production of fuels and chemicals from renewable resources has
gained great attention (13). 2,3-Butanediol (2,3-BD) is a useful
chemical that can be produced from renewable resources (3, 15).
It is an important platform compound, which could be used to
produce a series of useful products, such as methyl ethyl ketone
and 1,3-butadiene (2, 4). Microbial production of 2,3-BD has a
long history (over 100 years) (4). Various bacteria were used to
produce 2,3-BD (6, 7, 9, 15, 16). However, there has been only one
report related to 2,3-BD production by an Enterobacter strain, and
the production yield was very low (14). The Enterobacter cloacae
subsp. dissolvens SDM (CGMCC 4230) strain isolated from soil
samples is a potential industrial candidate for 2,3-BD production
(6), which could produce more than 100 g liter�1 2,3-BD from
glucose. Moreover, strain SDM has an extraordinary characteris-
tic of biomass utilization for 2,3-BD production. This strain could
efficiently use pentose sugars, xylose, and arabinose from ligno-
cellulose and other cheap biomass, such as cassava, one of the
most efficient crops in terms of carbohydrate production (11) for
2,3-BD production (unpublished results).

Here we determined a draft genome sequence of strain SDM. The
genome sequence was determined by 454 genome sequencer (454 GS
FLX) (10). The genome sequence contains 286,872 reads with an
average length of 356 bp at more than 20-fold coverage with the G�C
content of 55.1%. The reads were assembled using the Newbler As-
sembler (454 Life Science) into 168 large contigs (�500 bp) with a
length of 4,923,170 bp. The genome sequence was annotated by the
RAST server (1). tRNAs were predicted by tRNAscan-SE v.1.23 (8),
and rRNAs were found with the RNAmmer 1.2 (5).

The genome sequence of strain SDM contains 4,539 protein-
coding sequences (CDSs). Three rRNAs and 53 tRNAs were iden-
tified. Seventeen CDSs for the metabolism of pentose sugars from
biomass are annotated, which are related to the complete pentose
metabolic pathway, including 2 subpathways of phosphoketolase
and transketolase/transaldolase. This metabolism is important for
pentose utilization in the industrial application. In addition, there
are 712 CDSs for utilization of other carbohydrates, indicating
that strain SDM may have a wide substrate spectrum. The se-
quence contains the complete operon (2 CDSs) and key coding

genes (2 CDSs) for 2,3-BD metabolism, which could provide
further insights into efficient biomass utilization for the pro-
duction of 2,3-BD. The genome sequence also contains a series
of membrane transport systems, including 56 CDSs involved in
ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters. The ABC transport-
ers play important roles in not only accumulating compatible
solutes and substrates but also excreting unwanted products
(12). It may be an important reason for the high-yield produc-
tion of 2,3-BD.

Nucleotide sequence accession numbers. The whole-genome
shotgun sequence has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank
under accession number AGSY00000000. The version described
in this paper is the first version, with accession number
AGSY01000000.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Huajun Zheng and his colleagues for genome sequencing per-
formed at the Chinese National Human Genome Center in Shanghai,
People’s Republic of China.

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (31000014, 31070062, and 30821005) and the Chi-
nese National Program for High Technology Research and Development
(2011AA02A207).

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Received 20 November 2011 Accepted 29 November 2011

Address correspondence to Cuiqing Ma, macq@sdu.edu.cn, or Ping Xu,
pingxu@sjtu.edu.cn.

Y. Xu, A. Wang, and F. Tao contributed equally to this article.

Copyright © 2012, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

doi:10.1128/JB.06495-11

GENOME ANNOUNCEMENT

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