🚨 Very excited to finally say… 🚨. The story of Noodlococcus - the contaminant that started ContamClub - is available to read 📖🍜🦠. Check it out ➡️ 1/15 🧵

RT @tasturm1: #DescribeThatMicrobe Summer labs are in full swing as are demo plates with handprints! #Microbiology #SciComm @ASMicrobiology….

RT @power_to_plants: My contamination is contaminated! @ContamClub

15/15 We’re so glad to finally have this out there, it has been a fun side project for us alongside our research since we discovered Noodlococcus in 2019. Hope you enjoy reading! Check it out at ⤵️ .

14/15 All of these results came about from investigating a cool-looking contaminant. The Noodlococcus genome and our large-scale genomic evaluation can serve as a baseline for future studies into the distribution, diversity, and evolution of this ubiquitous species 🦠.

13/15 The oldest strain in the K. pseudorhizophila strain was first isolated by William A. Randall in a 1949 publication, so we suggest that an appropriate species name for the K. pseudorhizophila clade would be Kocuria randallii

12/15 The lack of indication that these strains are genetically distinct from the reference genome for K. rhizophila may lead to conflicting results and inaccurate conclusions . For example, this product is derived from a strain present in the K. pseudorhizophila clade ⤵️

11/15 Distinguishing these clades has important implications for the use of K. rhizophila strains as controls in research and industry. There are several strains available in culture collections, with some located in the true K. rhizophila clade and some in K. pseudorhizophila 😵‍💫.

10/15 Pan-fried noodles: pangenomic analysis of K. rhizophila showed clear clade-specific distinctions, adding weight to the argument that they should be separate species 🍳

9/15 All other Kocuria species had inter-species ANI values inline with the typical threshold of >95%. Splitting the two clades into separate species would maintain taxonomic consistency within the genus

8/15 Type strain TA68 and Noodlococcus were located in the same clade, which represents the true K. rhizophila. Other commonly used reference strains were located in the other clade, which we called “K. pseudorhizophila” 🥸.

7/15 When comparing all K. rhizophila genomes, we found that they clustered into two distinct clades 🤔. This was also indicated when calculating average nucleotide identities (ANIs), a common way of comparing genetic similarity (see heatmap)

6/15 We conducted a comparative, phylogenetic, and pangenomic examination of all 257 publicly available Kocuria genomes. The results were interesting! 🔍.

5/15 K. rhizophila is the cause of some rare human infections. It is also commonly used as a reference strain in industrial applications such as sterility and antimicrobial susceptibility tests 🧫💊. Despite this, there have been few genomic studies on the Kocuria genus 🧬.

4/15 From the Noodlococcus genome, we identified regions involved in replication 🔂, carotenoid synthesis 🟡 (the set of genes producing the distinctive yellow pigment!), and genome defence 🛡️ (CRISPR-Cas), and discovered four novel mobile elements (ISKrh4-7) 🧬

3/15 We whole genome sequenced it and found out that Noodlococcus was a strain of Kocura rhizophila - a ubiquitous species found all over the world. It has been isolated from Siberian permafrost, deep-sea sponges, on food products, plants, animals, and humans… it’s everywhere!🌍.

2/15 On August 9th 2019, we found a contaminant resembling a pile of noodles on an old BHI plate. After microscopy revealed it was a Gram-positive coccus, we named it Noodlococcus 🦠🍜

RT @M_ZakiHaider: The diverse colors and shapes in which contaminants come on the media agar plates excites me so much!.#bacteria #fungi #c….

Excited to share something with you all later this week… 🧫🦠🍜👀

RT @Sprn3ddtabIpc: Sunny side up @ContamClub