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Targeted discovery of glycoside hydrolases from a switchgrass-adapted compost community.

PloS one | 2010

Development of cellulosic biofuels from non-food crops is currently an area of intense research interest. Tailoring depolymerizing enzymes to particular feedstocks and pretreatment conditions is one promising avenue of research in this area. Here we added a green-waste compost inoculum to switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and simulated thermophilic composting in a bioreactor to select for a switchgrass-adapted community and to facilitate targeted discovery of glycoside hydrolases. Small-subunit (SSU) rRNA-based community profiles revealed that the microbial community changed dramatically between the initial and switchgrass-adapted compost (SAC) with some bacterial populations being enriched over 20-fold. We obtained 225 Mbp of 454-titanium pyrosequence data from the SAC community and conservatively identified 800 genes encoding glycoside hydrolase domains that were biased toward depolymerizing grass cell wall components. Of these, approximately 10% were putative cellulases mostly belonging to families GH5 and GH9. We synthesized two SAC GH9 genes with codon optimization for heterologous expression in Escherichia coli and observed activity for one on carboxymethyl cellulose. The active GH9 enzyme has a temperature optimum of 50 degrees C and pH range of 5.5 to 8 consistent with the composting conditions applied. We demonstrate that microbial communities adapt to switchgrass decomposition using simulated composting condition and that full-length genes can be identified from complex metagenomic sequence data, synthesized and expressed resulting in active enzyme.

Pubmed ID: 20098679 RIS Download

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This is a list of tools and resources that we have found mentioned in this publication.


SoftBerry (tool)

RRID:SCR_000902

Developer of software tools for genomic research focused on computational methods of high throughput biomedical data analysis, including software to support next generation sequencing technologies, transcriptome analysis with RNASeq data, SNP detection and selection of disease specific SNP subsets. Provides custom genome annotation services.

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DTU Center for Biological Sequence Analysis (tool)

RRID:SCR_003590

The Center for Biological Sequence Analysis of the Technical University of Denmark conducts basic research in the field of bioinformatics and systems biology and directs its research primarily towards topics related to the elucidation of the functional aspects of complex biological mechanisms. A large number of computational methods have been produced, which are offered to others via WWW servers. Several data sets are also available. The center also has experimental efforts in gene expression analysis using DNA chips and data generation in relation to the physical and structural properties of DNA. The on-line prediction services at CBS are available as interactive input forms. Most of the servers are also available as stand-alone software packages with the same functionality. In addition, for some servers, programmatic access is provided in the form of SOAP-based Web Services. The center also educates engineering students in biotechnology and systems biology and offers a wide range of courses in bioinformatics, systems biology, human health, microbiology and nutrigenomics.

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CAZy- Carbohydrate Active Enzyme (tool)

RRID:SCR_012909

Database that describes the families of structurally-related catalytic and carbohydrate-binding modules (or functional domains) of enzymes that degrade, modify, or create glycosidic bonds. This specialist database is dedicated to the display and analysis of genomic, structural and biochemical information on Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes (CAZymes). CAZy data are accessible either by browsing sequence-based families or by browsing the content of genomes in carbohydrate-active enzymes. New genomes are added regularly shortly after they appear in the daily releases of GenBank. New families are created based on published evidence for the activity of at least one member of the family and all families are regularly updated, both in content and in description. An original aspect of the CAZy database is its attempt to cover all carbohydrate-active enzymes across organisms and across subfields of glycosciences. One can search for CAZY Family pages using the Protein Accession (Genpept Accession, Uniprot Accession or PDB ID), Cazy family name or EC number. In addition, genomes can be searched using the NCBI TaxID. This search can be complemented by Google-based searches on the CAZy site.

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MG-RAST (tool)

RRID:SCR_004814

An automated analysis platform for metagenomes providing quantitative insights into microbial populations based on sequence data. The server primarily provides upload, quality control, automated annotation and analysis for prokaryotic metagenomic shotgun samples.

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Hmmer (tool)

RRID:SCR_005305

Tool for searching sequence databases for homologs of protein sequences, and for making protein sequence alignments. It implements methods using probabilistic models called profile hidden Markov models (profile HMMs). Compared to BLAST, FASTA, and other sequence alignment and database search tools based on older scoring methodology, HMMER aims to be significantly more accurate and more able to detect remote homologs because of the strength of its underlying mathematical models. In the past, this strength came at significant computational expense, but in the new HMMER3 project, HMMER is now essentially as fast as BLAST.

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PHYLIP (tool)

RRID:SCR_006244

A free package of software programs for inferring phylogenies (evolutionary trees). The source code is distributed (in C), and executables are also distributed. In particular, already-compiled executables are available for Windows (95/98/NT/2000/me/xp/Vista), Mac OS X, and Linux systems. Older executables are also available for Mac OS 8 or 9 systems.

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Newbler (tool)

RRID:SCR_011916

A software package for de novo DNA sequence assembly.

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KaleidaGraph (tool)

RRID:SCR_014980

Data analysis, graphing, and management application that allows users to import, manipulate, analyze data, and create customized plots. Plots include x-y probability, histogram, box, percentile, horizontal bar, stack bar, column, stack column, polar, and pie. Binned data can be exported to a histogram, step plot, or spike plot. KaleidaGraph works with Windows and Macintosh systems.

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SignalP (tool)

RRID:SCR_015644

Web application for prediction of the presence and location of signal peptide cleavage sites in amino acid sequences from different organisms. The method incorporates a prediction of cleavage sites and a signal peptide/non-signal peptide prediction based on a combination of several artificial neural networks.

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