Development of a cultivation-independent approach for the study of genetic diversity of Sinorhizobium meliloti populations

Darine Trabelsi; Francesco Pini; Marco Bazzicalupo; Emanuele G Biondi; Mohammed E Aouani; Alessio Mengoni

doi:10.1111/j.1755-0998.2009.02697.x

Development of a cultivation-independent approach for the study of genetic diversity of Sinorhizobium meliloti populations

Mol Ecol Resour. 2010 Jan;10(1):170-2. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-0998.2009.02697.x. Epub 2009 Apr 7.

Authors

Darine Trabelsi¹, Francesco Pini, Marco Bazzicalupo, Emanuele G Biondi, Mohammed E Aouani, Alessio Mengoni

Affiliation

¹ Laboratoire des Interactions Légumineuses-Microorganismes, Centre de Biotechnologie de Borj-Cedria, BP 901, Hammam-Lif 2050, Tunisia Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Firenze, Via Romana 17, I-50125 Firenze, Italy.

PMID: 21565004
DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-0998.2009.02697.x

Abstract

The development of a species-specific marker for the analysis of the genetic polymorphism of the nitrogen-fixing symbiotic bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti directly from environmental DNA is reported. The marker is based on terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) methodology targeting specifically the 16S-23S Ribosomal Intergenic Spacer of S. meliloti. Species-specificity and polymorphism of the marker were tested on DNA extracted from soil samples and from a collection of 130 S. meliloti bacterial isolates. These primers and the T-RFLP approach proved useful for the detection and analysis of polymorphism of S. meliloti populations.