PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sarah Henaut-Jacobs
AU  - Hemanoel Passarelli-Araujo
AU  - Thiago M. Venancio
TI  - Comparative genomics and phylogenomics of <em>Campylobacter</em> unveil potential novel species and provide insights into niche segregation
AID  - 10.1101/2022.10.11.511782
DP  - 2023 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.10.11.511782
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/03/18/2022.10.11.511782.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/03/18/2022.10.11.511782.full
AB  - Campylobacter is a bacterial genus associated with community outbreaks and gastrointestinal symptoms. Studies on Campylobacter generally focus on specific pathogenic species such as C. coli and C. jejuni. Currently, there are thousands of publicly available Campylobacter genomes, allowing a more complete assessment of the genus diversity. In this work, we report a network-based analysis of all available Campylobacter genomes to explore the genus structure and diversity, revealing potentially new species and elucidating genus features. We also hypothesize that the previously established Clade III of C. coli is in fact a novel species (referred here as Campylobacter spp12). Finally, we found a negative correlation between pangenome fluidity and saturation coefficient, with potential implications to the lifestyles of distinct Campylobacter species. Since pangenome analysis depends on the number of available genomes, this correlation could help estimate pangenome metrics of Campylobacter species with less sequenced genomes, helping understand their lifestyle and niche adaptation. Together, our results indicate that the Campylobacter genus should be re-evaluated, with particular attention to the interplay between genome structure and niche segregation.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.