Project description:Characterization of new bacterial catabolic genes and mobile genetic elements by high throughput genetic screening of a soil metagenomic library
Project description:Characterization of a metagenomic regulatory sequence library derived from M. xanthus, E. coli, and O. urethralis genomes in strains expressing different RpoD ortholog variants. Targeted DNA and RNA seq used to profile relative DNA and RNA abundances, respectively of each regulatory sequence construct in the library.
Project description:High-throughput sequencing-based characterization of human faecal microbiota metagenomic libraries for the selection of clones with biotechnological applications.
Project description:The development of DNA sequencing methods for characterizing microbial communities has evolved rapidly over the past decades. To evaluate more traditional, as well as newer methodologies for DNA library preparation and sequencing, we compared fosmid, short-insert shotgun and 454 pyrosequencing libraries prepared from the same metagenomic DNA samples. GC content was elevated in all fosmid libraries, compared with shotgun and 454 libraries. Taxonomic composition of the different libraries suggested that this was caused by a relative underrepresentation of dominant taxonomic groups with low GC content, notably Prochlorales and the SAR11 cluster, in fosmid libraries. While these abundant taxa had a large impact on library representation, we also observed a positive correlation between taxon GC content and fosmid library representation in other low-GC taxa, suggesting a general trend. Analysis of gene category representation in different libraries indicated that the functional composition of a library was largely a reflection of its taxonomic composition, and no additional systematic biases against particular functional categories were detected at the level of sequencing depth in our samples. Another important but less predictable factor influencing the apparent taxonomic and functional library composition was the read length afforded by the different sequencing technologies. Our comparisons and analyses provide a detailed perspective on the influence of library type on the recovery of microbial taxa in metagenomic libraries and underscore the different uses and utilities of more traditional, as well as contemporary 'next-generation' DNA library construction and sequencing technologies for exploring the genomics of the natural microbial world.
Project description:Fosmids and cosmids are vectors frequently used in functional metagenomic studies. With a large insert capacity (around 30 kb) they can encode dozens of cloned genes or in some cases, entire biochemical pathways. Fosmids with cloned inserts can be transferred to heterologous hosts and propagated to enable screening for new enzymes and metabolites. After screening, fosmids from clones with an activity of interest must be de novo sequenced, a critical step toward the identification of the gene(s) of interest. In this work, we present a new approach for rapid and high-throughput fosmid sequencing directly from Escherichia coli colonies without liquid culturing or fosmid purification. Our sample preparation involves fosmid amplification with phi29 polymerase and then direct nanopore sequencing using the Oxford Nanopore Technologies system. We also present a bioinformatics pipeline termed "phiXXer" that facilitates both de novo read assembly and vector trimming to generate a linear sequence of the fosmid insert. Finally, we demonstrate the accurate sequencing of 96 fosmids in a single run and validate the method using two fosmid libraries that contain cloned large insert (~30-40 kb) genomic or metagenomic DNA.IMPORTANCELarge-insert clone (fosmids or cosmids) sequencing is challenging and arguably the most limiting step of functional metagenomic screening workflows. Our study establishes a new method for high-throughput nanopore sequencing of fosmid clones directly from lysed Escherichia coli cells. It also describes a companion bioinformatic pipeline that enables de novo assembly of fosmid DNA insert sequences. The devised method widens the potential of functional metagenomic screening by providing a simple, high-throughput approach to fosmid clone sequencing that dramatically speeds the pace of discovery.
Project description:BackgroundIn the last few years, microsatellites have become the most popular molecular marker system and have intensively been applied in genome mapping, biodiversity and phylogeny studies of livestock. Compared to single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) as another popular marker system, microsatellites reveal obvious advantages. They are multi-allelic, possibly more polymorphic and cheaper to genotype. Calculations showed that a multi-allelic marker system always has more power to detect Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) than does a di-allelic marker system. Traditional isolation methods using partial genomic libraries are time-consuming and cost-intensive. In order to directly generate microsatellites from large-insert libraries a sequencing approach with repeat-containing oligonucleotides is introduced.ResultsSeventeen porcine microsatellite markers were isolated from eleven PAC clones by targeted oligonucleotide-mediated microsatellite identification (TOMMI), an improved efficient and rapid flanking sequence-based approach for the isolation of STS-markers. With the application of TOMMI, an average of 1.55 (CA/GT) microsatellites per PAC clone was identified. The number of alleles, allele size distribution, polymorphism information content (PIC), average heterozygosity (HT), and effective allele number (NE) for the STS-markers were calculated using a sampling of 336 unrelated animals representing fifteen pig breeds (nine European and six Chinese breeds). Sixteen of the microsatellite markers proved to be polymorphic (2 to 22 alleles) in this heterogeneous sampling. Most of the publicly available (porcine) microsatellite amplicons range from approximately 80 bp to 200 bp. Here, we attempted to utilize as much sequence information as possible to develop STS-markers with larger amplicons. Indeed, fourteen of the seventeen STS-marker amplicons have minimal allele sizes of at least 200 bp. Thus, most of the generated STS-markers can easily be integrated into multilocus assays covering a broader separation spectrum. Linkage mapping results of the markers indicate their potential immediate use in QTL studies to further dissect trait associated chromosomal regions.ConclusionThe sequencing strategy described in this study provides a targeted, inexpensive and fast method to develop microsatellites from large-insert libraries. It is well suited to generate polymorphic markers for selected chromosomal regions, contigs of overlapping clones and yields sufficient high quality sequence data to develop amplicons greater than 250 bases.