REP and ERIC Repetitive Sequences in Acetobacter diazotrophicus

Abstract

Acetobacter diazotrophicus is an endophytic bacteria that can fix atmospheric nitrogen at high osmotic pressure and at low pH (Stephan M P et al., 1991), being commonly associated with sugar cane crops all around the world. On the basis of multilocus enzyme electrophoresis, Dna fingerprints, plasmid profile and nifHDK hybridization patterns it has been postulated for these bacteria an extremely low genetic diversity (Caballero-Mellado J, Martinez-Romero E, 1994). As a prokaryotic genome A. diazotrophicus contains several low copy number repetitive sequences such as rDNA (Reis V et al., 1992) and tRNA genes. We studied the presence of REP, ERIC and BOX repetitive sequences in seven strains of this bacteria. Using rep, eric and box primers for PCR reactions and specific amplicons as probes on total genomic hybridization, we identified REP like and ERIC like repetitive sequences dispersed throughout the A. diazotrophicus genome. We conclude that these repetitives could be employed to fingerprint strains within these bacteria.KeywordsSugar CaneNitrogen FixationRepetitive SequencetRNA GeneGenomic HybridizationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.