Abstract

HERNANDEZ-LEON, R; MARTINEZ-TRUJILLO, M; VALENCIA-CANTERO, E  and  SANTOYO, G. Construction and characterization of a metagenomic DNA library from the rhizosphere of wheat (Triticum aestivum). Phyton (B. Aires) [online]. 2012, vol.81, n.1, pp.133-137. ISSN 1851-5657.

Rhizospheric soil of wheat plants contains a high diversity of microorganisms, and therefore, comprises a large reservoir for discovering genes with diverse agro-biotechnological applications. In this work, we constructed an E. coli metagenomic library based on bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones with large genomic inserts from metagenomic DNA from the rhizosphere of wheat plants. The average of the DNA cloned segments varies from 5 to 80 kb, with an average size of 38 kb. Random clones were end-sequenced and homology results showed that the clonation of metagenomic DNA codes mainly for metabolic and catalytic functions (40%), including amidohydrolase, hydrolase, peptidase, serine protease, endonuclease and exonuclease. Another interesting proportion of the clones revealed genomic sequences with hypothetical (17%) or unknown function (9%). The metagenomic sequences belonged mostly to Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Archaea, Actinobacteria, Fungi, Virus, Unclassified Bacteria and Unknown taxa. It is expected that the metagenomic library from rhizospheric soil of wheat plants keeps growing. At the same time, functional analyses are conducted in the search for genes of agrobiotech interest.

Keywords : Metagenomics; Rhizosphere; Wheat.

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