Microsatellites composition in bipartite Ralstonia solanacearum genomes: A comparative study between the phylotypes

Ralstonia solanacearum, a bacterial plant pathogen that cause wilt in many economically important vegetable crops including potato is called R. solanacearum species complex (RSSC) due to its enormous diversity and vast host range. The whole genome of three strains (Rs2, Rs25 and Rs75) belonging to different phylotypes that are known to cause potato wilt in India were sequenced and assembled. The genome-wide microsatellite content of these strains were studied along with four reference strains (GMI1000/I; CFBP2957/II; CMR15/III; PSI07/IV) to excavate the compositional biasness among the phylotypes. Genome wide G + C content was found to be 66.0–67.50% for all the strains with all the megaplsmids having higher than chromosomes. The highest tandem repeats were found in phylotype IV (Rs75 and PSI07) whereas, phylotype III which is not found to infect potato in India have the lowest. The dinucleotides TA and AT are underrepresented in both chromosome as well as megaplsmid whereas, GC and CG/CG were the most abundantly occurring repeats.