Isolation of Genes Encoding Carbon Metabolism Pathways from Complex Microbial Communities

Abstract

The ability to produce high-value products using bacteria will increasingly rely on continued research to make large-scale bacterial fermentation cost-efficient. Engineering bacteria to use alternate carbon sources as feedstock provides an opportunity to reduce production costs. Using inexpensive carbon sources from various forms of waste provides an opportunity to substantially reduce feedstock costs. Functional carbon metabolism pathways can be identified by the introduction of metagenomic libraries into the organism of interest followed by screening for the desired phenotype. We present here a method to transfer metagenomic libraries from E. coli to Pseudomonas alloputida, followed by screening for use of galactose as a sole carbon source.

Keywords: Carbon source utilization; Metagenomic library screening; Phenotypic complementation.