A common feature of the genus Bacillus is the ability to form dormant endospores. It is comprised of very diverse species which are present in almost any environment and every part of the world. Based on the diverse ecology and ubiquitous nature of these species, we have decided to assess the effect of environment and geography on strain relatedness. We retrieved the complete genomes and metadata of strains from the clades subtilis, cereus, pumilus and megaterium of the Bacillus genus. First, we made an overview of the metadata. We then analysed the genomes using FastANI to get distance matrices which showed the amount of nucleotide discrepancies. The matrices were imported into the MEGA11 software, which we used to construct several different phylogenetic trees. We used them to observe the inter species relatedness within clades and how the environment and geography of strains affects the intra species relatedness. The clades’ phylogenetic trees based on the FastANI results provided good differentiation between species. Except for the clades pumilus (because of several incorrectly determined species) and cereus. The latter is comprised of genetically very closely related species, that are separated based on important phenotypic properties. Based on phylogenetic trees of single species and separating strains based on metadata about their ecology and geography, some patterns showing the influence of the environment and geography on the intra species relatedness of strain. However, this was not enough to make any definite conclusions.
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