Minenosuke Matsutani

Abstract This study reports the physiological and genomic characterization of Corynebacterium glutamicum CS176, a newly isolated strain exhibiting a rare combination of traits: efficient l-arabinose utilization and l-glutamate production without chemical induction, even under excess biotin conditions.

1 Introduction The 16S rRNA gene is the most widely used molecular marker in bacterial taxonomy and microbiome research because of its universal conservation and mixture of variable and conserved regions (Clarridge 2004; Johnson et al. 2019). While powerful for genus-level identification, its resolving power varies substantially among taxa, and closely related species often share nearly identical sequences that hinder species-level discrimination (Chun et al. 2018; Church et al. 2020).

1 INTRODUCTION Yam (Dioscorea spp.) is an important staple food and source of income (Asiedu and Sartie, 2010). This tuber crop is cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions (Lebot, 2020), especially in West Africa, which accounts for 96% of the world's yam production (84 million tonnes annually) (FAOSTAT, 2022). The areas where yams are produced in the West African countries of Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo are collectively known as the ‘yam belt’ (Darkwa et al., 2020).