16S Metagenomic Analysis of Soil Microcosms

The inoculation of microbes into soil environments has numerous applications for improving soil quality and crop health; however, the ability of exogenous and engineered microbes to survive and spread in soil remains uncertain. To address this challenge, we used 16S sequencing to assay the survival and spread of Mycobacterium smegmatis, engineered with either plasmid transformation or genome integration, as well as its mycobacteriophage Kampy, in both sterilized and non-sterilized soil microcosms over a period of 49 days.