A culture-independent approach to unravel uncultured bacteria and functional genes in a complex microbial community.

ABSTRACT: Most microorganisms in nature are uncultured with unknown functionality. Sequence-based metagenomics alone answers 'who/what are there?' but not 'what are they doing and who is doing it and how?'. Function-based metagenomics reveals gene function but is usually limited by the specificity and sensitivity of screening strategies, especially the identification of clones whose functional gene expression has no distinguishable activity or phenotypes. A 'biosensor-based genetic transducer' (BGT) technique, which employs a whole-cell biosensor to quantitatively detect expression of inserted genes encoding designated functions, is able to screen for functionality of unknown genes from uncultured microorganisms. In this study, BGT was integrated with Stable isotope probing (SIP)-enabled Metagenomic

SUBMITTER: Wang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3474725 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature