期刊
FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY
卷 9, 期 -, 页码 -出版社
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00703
关键词
nitrogen fixation; primer evaluation; nifH gene; Illumina amplicon sequencing; NifMAP
类别
资金
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF) project [P25700-B20, P26392-B20]
- ERC from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program [636928]
- Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Program [628361]
- Austrian Academy of Sciences (OAW)
- Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic - MEYS [LM2015075, EF16_013/0001782]
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [P26392, P25700] Funding Source: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
- European Research Council (ERC) [636928] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
Diazotrophic microorganisms introduce biologically available nitrogen (N) to the global N cycle through the activity of the nitrogenase enzyme. The genetically conserved dinitrogenase reductase (nifH) gene is phylogenetically distributed across four clusters (I-IV) and is widely used as a marker gene for N-2 fixation, permitting investigators to study the genetic diversity of diazotrophs in nature and target potential participants in N-2 fixation. To date there have been limited, standardized pipelines for analyzing the nifH functional gene, which is in stark contrast to the 16S rRNA gene. Here we present a bioinformatics pipeline for processing nifH amplicon datasets - NifMAP (NifH MiSeq Illumina Amplicon Analysis Pipeline), which as a novel aspect uses Hidden-Markov Models to filter out homologous genes to nifH. By using this pipeline, we evaluated the broadly inclusive primer pairs (Ueda19F-R6, IGK3-DVV, and F2-R6) that target the nifH gene. To evaluate any systematic biases, the nifH gene was amplified with the aforementioned primer pairs in a diverse collection of environmental samples (soils, rhizosphere and roots samples, biological soil crusts and estuarine samples), in addition to a nifH mock community consisting of six phylogenetically diverse members. We noted that all primer pairs co-amplified nifH homologs to varying degrees; up to 90% of the amplicons were nifH homologs with IGK3-DVV in some samples (rhizosphere and roots from tall oat-grass). In regards to specificity, we observed some degree of bias across the primer pairs. For example, primer pair F2-R6 discriminated against cyanobacteria (amongst others), yet captured many sequences from subclusters IIIE and IIIL-N. These aforementioned subclusters were largely missing by the primer pair IGK3-DVV, which also tended to discriminate against Alphaproteobacteria, but amplified sequences within clusters IIIC (affiliated with Clostridia) and clusters IVB and IVC. Primer pair Ueda19F-R6 exhibited the least bias and successfully captured diazotrophs in cluster I and subclusters IIIE, IIIL, IIIM, and IIIN, but tended to discriminate against Firmicutes and subcluster IIIC. Taken together, our newly established bioinformatics pipeline, NifMAP, along with our systematic evaluations of nifH primer pairs permit more robust, high-throughput investigations of diazotrophs in diverse environments.
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