Chakravorty S, Sarkar S, Gachhui R
Department of Life Science and Biotechnology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032, West Bengal, India.
Mol Biol (Mosk). 2015 Sep-Oct;49(5):749-59. doi: 10.7868/S0026898415050055.
The Acetobacteraceae family of the class Alpha Proteobacteria is comprised of high sugar and acid tolerant bacteria. The Acetic Acid Bacteria are the economically most significant group of this family because of its association with food products like vinegar, wine etc. Acetobacteraceae are often hard to culture in laboratory conditions and they also maintain very low abundances in their natural habitats. Thus identification of the organisms in such environments is greatly dependent on modern tools of molecular biology which require a thorough knowledge of specific conserved gene sequences that may act as primers and or probes. Moreover unconserved domains in genes also become markers for differentiating closely related genera. In bacteria, the 16S rRNA gene is an ideal candidate for such conserved and variable domains. In order to study the conserved and variable domains of the 16S rRNA gene of Acetic Acid Bacteria and the Acetobacteraceae family, sequences from publicly available databases were aligned and compared. Near complete sequences of the gene were also obtained from Kombucha tea biofilm, a known Acetobacteraceae family habitat, in order to corroborate the domains obtained from the alignment studies. The study indicated that the degree of conservation in the gene is significantly higher among the Acetic Acid Bacteria than the whole Acetobacteraceae family. Moreover it was also observed that the previously described hypervariable regions V1, V3, V5, V6 and V7 were more or less conserved in the family and the spans of the variable regions are quite distinct as well.
α-变形菌纲醋杆菌科由耐高糖和耐酸细菌组成。醋酸菌是该科在经济上最重要的一类，因为它们与醋、葡萄酒等食品有关。醋杆菌科在实验室条件下通常难以培养，并且在其自然栖息地中的丰度也非常低。因此，在这种环境中鉴定生物体很大程度上依赖于现代分子生物学工具，而这需要对可能用作引物和/或探针的特定保守基因序列有深入了解。此外，基因中的非保守结构域也成为区分密切相关属的标记。在细菌中，16S rRNA基因是此类保守和可变结构域的理想候选者。为了研究醋酸菌和醋杆菌科16S rRNA基因的保守和可变结构域，对来自公开数据库的序列进行了比对和比较。还从已知的醋杆菌科栖息地康普茶生物膜中获得了该基因的近乎完整的序列，以证实从比对研究中获得的结构域。研究表明，醋酸菌中该基因的保守程度明显高于整个醋杆菌科。此外，还观察到先前描述的高变区V1、V3、V5、V6和V7在该科中或多或少是保守的，并且可变区的跨度也相当不同。
