Positive identification of a lambda gt11 clone containing a region of fungal phytase gene by immunoprobe and sequence verification.

As the initial step in a project to provide a more cost-effective source of the phytase enzyme, this paper reports on the use of a polyclonal antibody raised to phytase purified from an isolate of Aspergillus niger (A. ficuum) to screen an A. niger lambda gt11 expression library and the use of amino acid sequencing to identify a clone containing part of the fungal phytase gene. The described use of amino acid sequence fragments to verify the cloning of a gene has potential applications in other cloning projects.