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Diversity among aromatic hydrocarbon‐degrading bacteria and their meta ‐cleavagegenes
Author(s) -
Daly K.,
Dixon A.C.,
Swannell R.P.J.,
Lepo J.E.,
Head I.M.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of applied microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.889
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1365-2672
pISSN - 1364-5072
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2672.1997.00254.x
Subject(s) - biology , bacteria , gene , microbiology and biotechnology , polymerase chain reaction , southern blot , dna , genetics
Sixty‐one strains of bacteria capable of growth on 4‐methyl benzoic acid (29 isolates) ornaphthalene (32 isolates) as the sole source of carbon and energy were isolated from sedimentsand water samples from the River Tyne, UK. Random amplification of polymorphic DNA fromgenomic DNA extracted from the different strains demonstrated that 14 of the 4‐methylbenzoate‐degrading isolates were unique and the remainder fell into seven groups containing twoor three isolates that produced identical banding patterns. Thirteen of the naphthalene‐degradingisolates were unique and nine groups with two or three identical representatives encompassed allother isolates. Screening of the bacterial strains for the presence of genes homologous to xylE , nahC and bphC by polymerase chain reaction and dot blot hybridizationdemonstrated that most strains harboured xylE ‐ and/or nahC ‐like genes and only asingle isolate was found that did not harbour any of these genes. None of the isolates harboured bphC ‐like genes. It was concluded that, while considerable diversity existed in host strainsisolated using a single simple enrichment procedure, the extradiol dioxygenase genes involved inaromatic ring cleavage, present in these strains, were conserved to a considerable degree.