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Purpose: Verminephrobacter is a genus of symbiotic bacteria that live in the nephridia of earthworms. The bacteria are recruited during the embryonic stage of the worm and transferred from generation to generation in the same manner. The worm provides shelter and food for the bacteria. The bacteria deliver micronutrients to the worm. The present study reports the genome sequence assembly and annotation of a new strain of Verminephrobacter called Verminephrobacter eiseniae msu. Methods: We separated the sequences of a new Verminephrobacter strain from the whole genome of Eisenia fetida using the sequence of V. eiseniae EF01-2, and the bacterial genome was assembled using the CLC Workbench. The de novo-assembled genome was annotated and analyzed for the protein domains, functions, and metabolic pathways. Besides, the multigenome comparison was performed to interpret the phylogenomic relationship of the strain with other proteobacteria. Result: The FastqSifter sifted a total of 593,130 Verminephrobacter genomic reads. The de novo assembly of the reads generated 1832 contigs with a total genome size of 4.4 Mb. The Average Nucleotide Identity denoted the bacterium belongs to the species V. eiseniae, and the 16S rRNA analysis confirmed it as a new strain of V. eiseniae. The AUGUSTUS genome annotation predicted a total of 3809 protein-coding genes; of them, 3805 genes were identified from the homology search. Conclusion: The bioinformatics analysis confirmed the bacterium is an isolate of V. eiseniae, and it was named Verminephrobacter eiseniae msu. The whole genome of the bacteria can be utilized as a useful resource to explore the area of symbiosis further.

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The earthworm Eudrilus eugeniae, commonly called as “African night-crawler” is a segmented animal which is divided into three major segments such as anterior, clitellar and posterior segments. The earthworm has enormous ability to regenerate the autotomized or lost body parts. The clitellar region plays a pivotal role in the regeneration of both anterior and posterior region of earthworm. In the present study, the Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) sequence was retrieved from Eudrilus eugeniae transcriptome dataset and we found a contig in the size of 1873bp with 609 amino acids. The expression of the AFP was not detected in the body segment but the expression of the protein was confirmed only in clitellar and regenerative blastema by the immunoblot technique. Both in the clitellum and regenerative blastema, the AFP was located in the nucleus. The data suggest that AFP has a decisive role in the regeneration of earthworms.