Abstract: In order to efficiently utilize shrimp and crab shells for the production of chitosan with chitin deacetylase, genomic sequencing of a Rhodococcus strain with high productivity of chitin deacetylase, designed 11-3 was conducted using Illumina high-throughput sequencing in this study. Subsequently, bioinformatics analysis was performed, including Gene Ontology (GO), Cluster of Orthologous Group (COG), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) function annotation of genes, carbohydrate-active enzyme annotation, and bioinformatics analysis of chitin degradation enzyme genes. It was found that the genome of Rhodococcus 11-3 was 6 089 866 bp in length including a total of 5 904 coding genes with a GC content of 70.514%. A total of 165 genes were identified by carbohydrate-active enzyme annotation, including 59 carbohydrate esterase genes, 42 glycosyltransferase genes, 36 glycoside hydrolase genes and 28 auxiliary oxidoreductase genes. Among these, one chitin deacetylase gene (gene 4907), four chitinase (EC 3.2.1.14) genes (genes 1286, 1287, 3810, and 4754) and two chitinase (EC 3.2.1.132) genes (genes 4921 and 5362) were identified. The sequence similarity between gene 4907 and the reported chitin deacetylase genes was 26.60%–32.43%, suggesting that gene 4907 was a new chitin deacetylase. Therefore, Rhodococcus 11-3 has great potential in the utilization of chitin resources.

Key words: chitin deacetylase; Rhodococcus; chitin; genome