Cullars Soil Metagenomcs

Soil microorganisms have been an important reservoir of antibiotic and other bioactive compounds. This project aims explore and exploit the soil microbial diversity of Cullars Rotation soil in Auburn, Alabama one of the oldest crop rotations in the United States. Our efforts include mining the soil microbiota for biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) associated with antibiotic production, as well as community characterization with special attention to members of the group Patescibacteria in these soils.For BGC mining, the Cullars Metagenomic Library was build focusing on large insert BAC clones. BGCs were detected by applying next-generation sequencing to the entire metagenomic library, enabling bioinformatic identification of pathways and gene content associated with individual clones, with a specific interest in polyketide synthase pathways (PKSs) and non-ribosomal peptide synthases (NRPSs).Cullars soil microbiota have been explored using 16S rRNA amplicon surveys and direct sequencing studies are being developed.