Strain similarity based on phenotypes

Genotype-phenotype matching

Integrated analysis using an iterative gene selection allowed identification of gene-phenotype relations that could not be found by studying genotype and phenotype data separately. In genotype-phenotype matching, we used the presence/absence of 4026 ortholog groups (OGs; see Methods) in 38 L. lactis strains (Table 1) determined by comparative genome hybridization (CGH) as genotype data. These 38 strains are a subset of a large representative collection of L. lactis trains that covers genotype, niche and phenotype diversity of L. lactis species [15]. For phenotype data, we used phenotypic measurements of these strains in 207 experiments that were previously assessed in separate studies (see Methods and Additional file 1). After pre-processing, phenotype data from 130 experiments was usable for genotype-phenotype matching (see Methods). Only associations of genes to accurately classified phenotypes (see Methods) were considered in further analysis, which resulted in 140 phenotypes, assessed in 74 different experiments.

Many gene-phenotype relations were identified: a total of 1388 OGs or on average 565 genes per reference strain were identified to be related to at least one of these 140 phenotypes. In the present study, we focussed on gene clusters consisting of at least two phenotype-related genes that are in close genomic proximity (e.g., in operons; see Methods). Transposases, integrases and phage proteins were also removed, because relations between these proteins and phenotypes are likely to be spurious. Discarding above-mentioned genes decreased the percentage of phenotype-related genes by about 50% on average. In analyzing gene clusters, we first considered gene clusters of which their presence relates to a positive trait (e.g., growth) and absence relates to a negative trait (e.g., no growth). There were also many gene clusters with inverse patterns, where an absence of a gene cluster leads to a positive trait. An inverse relationship between genes and phenotypes might indicate that in the absence of a regulator, genes previously inhibited by this particular regulator can become active, which in turn might lead to a positive trait (e.g., survival of a strain). In the supplementary data we provide all identified relations including inverse relations (see genotype-phenotype relations in an Additional file 2 that contains a mini-website).

Genes related to carbohydrate utilization

Several gene clusters related to fermentation of different sugars were identified by genotype-phenotype matching. Among them were gene clusters that were previously described to be involved in carbohydrate utilization [16]. For instance, the presence of a gene cluster required for arabinose utilization [9] was confirmed in this study to correlate strongly with the ability to grow on arabinose (see Figure 1 for colour-coded representation of gene-phenotype relations and Figure 2 for gene-phenotype relations of KF147 genes LLKF_1616-1622, and their orthologs in query strains). Several gene clusters were found to be related to sucrose utilization; for instance a cluster of 4 genes (LLKF_0661-LLKF_0664 in strain KF147, and their orthologs in query strains) that already was annotated as being involved in sucrose utilization (Figure 2) [8]. The other three reference strains do not grow on sucrose, and this gene cluster was absent in these strains. These genes were also found to be inversely related to growth on lactose, where they were present in most of the strains that grew slowly on lactose and absent in most of the strains that can grow on lactose (Figure 2). Such a relationship suggests that most of the strains that grow well on sucrose (22 strains) cannot grow or grow slowly on lactose (17 out of 22 strains) or vice-versa (10 out of 15 lactose-degrading strains cannot grow on sucrose). This also partly reflects niche adaptation of these strains, because most of the lactose-degrading strains were dairy isolates (10 out of 15) and most of the sucrose-utilizing strains were of plant origin (17 out of 22). Additionally, we also identified an association between sucrose fermentation and nisin production in L. lactis. Both sucrose utilization and nisin biosynthesis genes were earlier reported to be encoded on a transposon in strain NIZO R5 [23]. Additionally, linkage between these phenotypes has been observed in 13 L. lactis strains [24]. Visualization of identified gene-phenotype relations revealed that sucrose-negative strains lack part or all of the genes related to nisin production. For example, KF147 - a nisin non-producer strain - contains only part of the nisin gene cluster, conferring immunity but not production (see LLKF_1296, LLKF_1298 and LLKF_1300 in Figure 2) [9]. However, we found no strong relation between growth on sucrose and presence of nisin biosynthesis genes, confirming a previous observation that the presence of nisin biosynthesis genes in a strain does not always confer its growth on sucrose [25].

A large cluster of 11 genes (Figure 2) was found to be related to growth on melibiose, a plant disaccharide, but not to any of the other carbohydrates tested. This confirms an earlier observation that strain KF147 can utilize this disaccharide while 3 other strains IL1403 (dairy), SK11 (dairy) and KF282 (plant) strains cannot grow on melibiose [9, 26]. We also investigated whether a genomic region that encompasses these genes was deleted in melibiose-negative strains, because chromosomal deletion of a 12 kb region in Streptococcus mutans strains leads to melibiose-negative phenotype [27, 28]; this 12 kb region contains orthologs of LLKF_2260-2262 of strain KF147. Because tiling pan-genome CGH arrays were used to identify gene occurrence in these strains, deletion of a genomic region in query strains can be determined (see Methods). Therefore, we visualized a small genomic region of approximately 20 Kb (see Additional file 2) that covers the starting position of LLKF_2250 and the end position of LLKF_2270 on the KF147 genome. This region encompasses all these 11 genes and several more genes. Indeed, we also observed that this large 20 Kb region was deleted or absent in all melibiose-negative strains from both plant and dairy origin (see Additional file 2). Probably, only 10 genes consecutively located in a 15 Kb region (corresponding to genes LLKF_2259-LLKF_2269 in strain KF147) are necessary for growth on melibiose.

Genes related to metal resistance

Using genotype-phenotype matching several gene clusters were found relating to heavy metal resistance, and some of these genes are located on plasmids. For instance, we found clusters of genes related to copper resistance; these are located on plasmids C and D in strain SK11 (Figure 3A), which confirms a previous finding [29]. One of these gene clusters (LACR C61-C65 in strain SK11, and their orthologs in query strains) was previously identified to be involved in copper resistance [14]. Additionally, a cluster of four genes (llmg1248-1250, llmg_1254 in strain MG1363, and their orthologs in query strains) was identified by gene-trait matching to be related to arsenite resistance (Figure 3B and 3C), which is usually known as a plasmid-borne trait [29], and two of these genes are annotated as arsenical-resistance proteins (Additional file 3). However, these could be plasmid genes that were transferred to the chromosome in the plasmid curing process of MG1363.

Genes related to arginine metabolism

Several gene clusters were found to be relevant to arginine hydrolase activity, and therefore the ability to metabolize arginine. A cluster of 4 genes (L65637, L66209, L66407 and L67002 in strain IL1403, and their orthologs) was identified to be relevant to arginine metabolism (Figure 4A). All 4 proteins are annotated as hypothetical proteins in strain IL1403 and two of them, L66209 and L67002, are probably membrane proteins as they belong to a cluster of orthologous groups of proteins (COGs) [30], which contains membrane proteins. A gene cluster of 5 MG1363 genes was also identified to be related to arginine metabolism (Figure 4B), and two encoded proteins, llmg_1257 and llmg_1259, are in the same COGs with proteins L66209 and L67002 of strain IL1403. The protein L67002 belongs to a family of membrane proteins of which some are glycosyltransferase-associated proteins. Probably, at least two of these proteins, L66209 and L67002, and their MG1363 orthologs, llmg_1257 and llmg_1259, should be re-annotated as transport proteins or maybe more specifically arginine transport proteins. However, experimental validation is necessary.

Plasmid genes related to phenotypes

Plasmid genes are necessary for manifestation of some phenotypes. For instance, it is already well-known that the lactose metabolism genes are localized on plasmid D of SK11 [14]. Indeed, we found that the presence/absence of these lactose metabolism genes (LACR_D01-07 and LACR_D38-39 in SK11, and their orthologs in query strains) in the 38 strains to be highly correlated to growth on lactose (Figure 5). Again, there appears to be an inverse relationship with the presence of these same lactose utilization genes for no-growth on some other sugars (trehalose, arbutin, amygdalin). Thus, using plasmid genes in addition to chromosomal genes in genotype-phenotype matching allowed confirming previously known functions of some plasmid genes and identifying novel relationships between plasmid genes and some phenotypes.

Partial gene-phenotype relations

For each experiment category several (on average 9) partial relations between gene clusters and phenotypes, where a gene is present in only a subset of strains with a particular phenotype (Figure 1), were identified. Most of these gene clusters contain only two genes and were often found to be relevant to a negative trait (e.g.: no-growth). As example we present partial relations between a cluster of four genes of strain MG1363 (and their orthologs in query strains) and arsenite resistance (Figure 3B). These genes were found to be relevant for strains growing at 0.9625 mM of arsenite and are present in most of the highly resistant strains. However, some of these genes are only present in a subset of strains with no or mild resistance (Figure 3B). Visualizing occurrence of these genes in strains revealed that they are mostly absent in strains with no arsenite resistance phenotype and mostly present in strains with mild or high arsenite resistance phenotypes (Figure 3C).

Strains

For genotyping, a total of 39 L. lactis strains were selected from 91 L. lactis strains of which several phenotype and genotype properties were previously assessed [15]. These strains were isolated from plant and dairy niches and belong to 3 different subspecies: lactis (28 strains), cremoris (10 strains) and hordniae (one strain). These strains represent the genotype, niche and phenotype diversity of the L. lactis species [15]. Phenotypic properties of the strain NIZOB2244B were not assessed; therefore, 38 strains were used in genotype-phenotype matching (see Table 1).

Phenotypic diversity tests

Strains were incubated in 96-well micro-plates in quadruplicate in 250 μl M17 broth (Oxoid Ltd., Basingstoke, Hampshire, England) supplemented with 1% glucose (wt/vol) (GM17). Medium was supplemented either with different concentrations of NaCl; nisin (Sigma Chemical, St Louis, USA); metals; antibiotics; or polysaccharides (see Additional file 1). The plates were incubated overnight at 30°C [31].

For incubation of strains in GM17 medium different temperatures (4, 17, 30, 37 or 45°C) were used. Strains were also incubated in several other media: skimmed milk, skimmed milk supplemented with 0.5% yeast extract (Difco, Becton, Dickinson and company, Sparks, USA) and MRS-broth (Merck KGaA, Germany). Fermentation tests of arginine hydrolase activity, 50 different sugars and citrate were performed as reported previously [15]. Activity of several enzymes, i.e. branched chain aminotransferase, alpha-hydroxyisocaproic acid dehydrogenase, aminopeptidase N, cystathionine β lyase, X-prolyl dipeptidyl aminopeptidase and esterase in strains growing on GM17-broth or CDM-media, were previously assessed [32, 33]. More information about phenotyping experiments and results of these experiments are available in an Additional file 1.

Genotype data

The gene content of L. lactis strains was previously determined by pan-genome CGH arrays, where tiling array probes were based on chromosomal, plasmid and single gene or operon DNA sequences of this species as described in [34]. Next to probes targeting all known genes within Lactococcus sp. [35] we additionally targeted intergenic regions. However, in this study, we did not use the probes targeting intergenic regions. We grouped orthologous genes into ortholog groups (OGs); bidirectional orthologous relations among genes of four fully sequenced strains were identified by pair-wise comparisons using InParanoid [36] with default parameters [34]. The genomes used were from L. lactis strains ssp. lactis IL1403, ssp. lactis KF147, ssp. cremoris SK11 and ssp. cremoris MG1363. MG1363 replaces the incomplete chromosomal sequence of KF282 strain that was used in the array design [34]. Genes with inconsistent bidirectional orthologous relations and plasmid genes of plasmid-containing strains (SK11 and KF147) were each treated as a separate OG containing a single gene. In total, 4026 OGs were created of which 149 specified single plasmid genes. For a gene member of an OG scoring the signal intensities of aligned probes determines its presence/absence in a query strain [34]. We used the PanCGHweb web-tool to find presence/absence of OGs in these strains [37].

Visualizing and identifying presence or absence of a genomic segment

Presence or absence of contiguously located genes (i.e. a gene cluster) in a query strain indicates that the whole genomic region encompassing these genes is present or absent in this particular strain. Therefore presence or absence of a genomic segment in a query strain compared to a reference strain was identified. To this end, probes aligning to a genomic region of interest in a reference strain were identified. The log ratio of probe signals in a query strain to the reference strain was visualized to identify presence or absence of a genomic region in a query strain.

Data pre-processing

In PhenoLink, genotype and phenotype data are pre-processed before using them in genotype-phenotype matching analysis. PhenoLink is based on the Random Forest algorithm [38]. In random forest classification, trees are trained based on random selections of genes and strains, genes with the same occurrence pattern could get different contribution scores [39]. This score is an estimate of how important a gene is to correctly classify a certain strain. Additionally, genes that are either present or absent in (almost) all queried strains have negligible impacts to separate strains of differing phenotypes [40]. Thus we did not use genes with homogeneous occurrence patterns and used only one of the highly correlated genes in further analysis. Prior to classification, phenotypes with continuous measurements were grouped into 3 bins, where each bin represents a different category. Strains that belong to the middle category were not used in genotype-phenotype matching to improve the classification accuracy. Additionally, in some experiments most of the strains exhibited a single phenotype such as the capability to grow on a certain sugar. Such an imbalance often leads to biased classification. Therefore imbalance in the number of strains per phenotype was decreased by creating 100 bags [22].

Genotype-phenotype matching

Genes related to phenotypes were identified using PhenoLink mostly with default parameter settings. To decrease effects of random selection, the same genotype and phenotype data were classified 3 times and only genes consistently relating to phenotypes were selected. Additionally, only genes with a positive contribution score for at least a few (in this study 3) strains of a phenotype were used for further classification, which decreases spurious relations between genes and phenotypes. This iterative removal of genes continued until no more than a few (in this study 5) genes were removed [22]. Only relations to phenotypes that were classified with at least 60% accuracy were used in further visualization and analysis, which was empirically defined to allow visualizing even weaker relations. The accuracy was estimated by the Random Forest algorithm and is the percentage of strains that were correctly classified. For each phenotype, genes were sorted based on their phenotype importance, which is the sum of gene’s contribution score for each strain of this particular phenotype, and genes with the highest phenotype importance (in this study the top 50 genes) were selected. Genes that had homogenous occurrence patterns (variance < 0.05) were not used in genotype-phenotype matching. Highly correlated genes (e.g. members of the same operon) were added to the selected top genes provided that they were correlated to any gene in the top genes. The added gene was assigned the same phenotype importance as the gene to which it is correlated.

Visualization of gene-phenotype relations

Visualization of the identified gene-phenotype relations facilitates quick screening and simplifies the analysis of these relations. Visualizing relations between accurately classified phenotypes (in this study a total of 140) and genes (here a total of 1388 OGs or on average 565 genes for each of the 4 reference strains) creates a large figure, which is difficult to analyze. To simplify visualization and analysis of gene-phenotype relations, phenotyping experiments were categorized into 5 groups based on experiment type: (i) growth on sugar, (ii) antibiotic resistance, (iii) metal resistance, (iv) growth on milk or polysaccharides and (v) remaining experiments (see also Table 2 and Additional file 1). Genes related to these phenotypes were visualized by merging the presence/absence of a gene with its phenotype importance. Since a gene’s presence/absence is strain-specific, its occurrence in strains of a phenotype was quantified to determine if a gene is predominantly present or absent. Merging predominant presence/absence of a gene with its phenotype importance creates 6 possible combinations each represented with a different colour as shown in Figure 1. A gene that is present in at least 75% of strains of a phenotype is assumed to be predominantly present and a gene that is absent in at least 75% of strains of a phenotype is assumed to be predominantly absent; otherwise a gene is assumed to be present in a subset of strains.

Visualization of gene-phenotype relations in reference strains allows identification of genes that are localized in close genomic proximity (e.g., members of the same operon). Therefore, gene-phenotype relations for corresponding genes of the reference strains were included in the visualization (see also Additional file 2). Two reference strains (SK11 and KF147) have plasmids; therefore, in the visualization a total of 149 plasmid genes were also used. In visualizing gene-phenotype relations, the phenotype importance of an OG was used for all its members. For each reference strain on average 565 gene-phenotype relations were found, but we focussed our analysis on phenotype-related gene clusters, which are genes in close genomic proximity. Two genes were considered in close proximity if a distance between their genomic starting positions did not exceed 2500 nucleotides, which was empirically determined. Using distances larger than 2500 nucleotides results in visualizing more non-neighbouring genes (false-positives), but using smaller distance would discard some neighbouring genes (false-negatives). Discarding true neighbours from visualization has more impact than including non-neighbours, because non-neighbouring genes can be easily recognized in visualization. Remaining gene-phenotype relations were visualized based on genomic order of genes.

Partial relations between genes and phenotypes, where a gene is present in only a subset of strains with a particular phenotype, were visualized with black colour (Figure 1). Gene’s occurrence in a strain was merged with its contribution score as shown in Figure 1. Gene-strain relations were visualized to show in which strains a gene is present and to which strains of a phenotype a gene was found to be relevant.

Clustering of strains based on phenotypes

Hierarchical clustering of strains based on their phenotypes could reveal the phenotypic similarity of strains, which might be linked to their genotype. Thus, strains were hierarchically clustered based on the phenotypes using the euclidean distance metric and the average linkage agglomerative clustering method [39]. Experiments that only contained phenotype information for all 38 strains were used in clustering and strains were clustered for each of the 5 experiment categories separately (see Table 2 and Additional file 1). Clustering was not performed for fifth experiment category, because there were only 5 experiments where all 38 strains had phenotype information.