BISC209: Lab5
LAB 5: Con't. Project: Soil Microbial Communities & Diversity
Preparing your clones for sequencing analysis
When you examine your transformation plates after an overnight incubation, you should see hundreds of identical looking well isolated colonies, all containg the vector which expresses the kanamycin resistance gene and allows the clones to grow on this media with kanamycin that normally would disrupt bacterial protein synthesis and kill the cells. We also know that each of the vectors imparting Kan resistance contains a 16S rDNA insert from one of your soil flora. We know that insert is in the vector because it is responsible for disrupting expression of the ccdB (control of cell death) gene which, if not disrupted, expresses the ccdB protein that poisons bacterial DNA gyrase, causing degradation of the host chromosome and cell death. We hope there are hundreds of 16s rDNA gene fragments from DIFFERENT soil bacteria.
You and your partner will be given a 96 well sterile plate to fill with a bit of each of the clones you want send away for sequencing.
Preparing Glycerol Stocks to send out for sequencing
1. Streak the original colonies out on LB plates containing 50 μg/ml kanamycin-labeling each with your team color initial, eg. Tues red= TR-1, R-2, R-3, etc up to 96. Incubate at 37C overnight.
2. Isolate a single colony and inoculate into 1-2 ml of LB containing 50 μg/ml
kanamycin. Keep your labeling clear.
3. Grow with shaking to log phase (OD600 = ~0.5)
4. Mix 0.85 ml of culture with 0.15 ml of sterile glycerol and transfer it to a well in the 96 well plate. Keep the numbering straight!!! Make a template in your lab notebook.
5. Give the plate to your instructor to seal and send away on dry ice.
The sequences should come back in a week or two.
ID Cultured Bacteria by 16srDNA Sequencing and Analysis
Besides working on getting your soil sample DNA isolated, amplified by pcr, inserted in a cloning vector, transformed into E. coli, and the 16s rDNA insert sequenced in an automatic sequencer so you can identify a more represenative scope of the bacterial flora in your soil sample, you have been working simultaneously, through traditional microbiological culturing techniques, to isolate and identify some of the culturable bacteria by morphology and metabolism differentiation. Look how much you have accomplished in these few short weeks!!
By this point you have isolated pure colonies of some soil bacteria on general and enrichment media and you have gotten some preliminary information about the morphologic and metabolic characteristic of the bacteria you have chosen to identify. You will continue learning about how these bacteria are different from one another and how they contribute to their community. At the same time we want to identify these bacteria by their 16s rDNA unique sequences in a similar way as we did for our unknown general soil sample bacteria. You should be very familiar with the strategy we will employ outlined below.
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