Abstract: To dissect the bacteriocin gene clusters of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum CHEN1, which has a significant inhibitory effect on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the whole genome of CHEN1 was sequenced using PacBio RS and Illumina platforms. antiSMASH and BAGEL4 were used to predict bacteriocin gene clusters and explore their potential action mechanisms. The whole genome sequencing results revealed that the genome of L. plantarum CHEN1 was 3 330 435 bp in size, with a GC content of 44.34%, including one chromosome sequence and eight plasmids. It contained 3 196 protein-coding genes, with 704, 2 317 and 2 775 genes being annotated in the Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and Cluster of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COG) databases, respectively. The genome sequencing data were submitted to NCBI under GenBank accession number PRJNA1014938. Three bacteriocin-related gene clusters, T3PKS, RiPPs and Class IIb bacteriocins, were predicted by antiSMASH and BAGEL4, meeting the prerequisites for bacteriocin expression. This study provides a bioinformatic foundation for the development and application of CHEN1 and its MRSA-inhibiting bacteriocin.

Key words: Lactiplantibacillus plantarum; whole genome; functional annotation; bacteriocin; methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus