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The feather-degrading bacterial community in two soils as revealed by a specific primer targeting serine-type keratinolytic proteases

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Abstract

Feather waste represents a huge resource of protein, but is underutilized due to its recalcitrant nature. Feather-degrading bacteria can biologically degrade feathers and have great potential for industries. In this study, we first designed a primer set (BC) suitable for exploring the diversity of the keratinolytic bacterial community with denatured gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). With the BC primer set, the difference in the keratinolytic bacterial community between a feather-dumping (FD) soil and a non feather-dumping (NFD) soil and the influence of feather addition (enrichment culture) on the keratinolytic bacterial community were investigated. DGGE and sequencing showed that keratinolytic bacteria in these soils belong to 2 phyla (Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria) and 9 genera (Micromonospora, Verrucosispora, Actinopolymorpha, Knoellia, Hyalangium, Stigmatella, Archangium, Cystobacter, and Luteimonas). Feather addition decreased the species richness of the keratinolytic bacteria in FD soil, but greatly increased the diversity, species richness and abundance in NFD soil. Moreover, feather addition to NFD soil induced some keratinolytic bacteria that were absent in all of the other soils. Collectively, these data indicate that keratinolytic bacteria are diverse in both FD and NFD soil, and some novel keratinolytic bacteria taxa might be revealed by using the BC primer set.

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Acknowledgments

We thank our colleagues at Guangdong Wenshi Food Co. Ltd. and at the Heshan Hilly Land Interdisciplinary Experimental Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for collecting the soils. This study was funded by the Guangdong Sci-Technology Project [Grant Numbers 2008B021000047, 2011B090400613, 2016B090918090] and Guangzhou Sci-Technology Project [Grant Number 201508020070].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Horticulture, Guangdong Engineering Research Center for Litchi, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, South China Agricultural University, Wushan St. 483, Tianhe Dist., Guangzhou, 510642, China

    Zhenhong Gu, Xiaolin Xie, Xiaodi Liu & Qing Yao

  2. Guangdong Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Applied Microbiology, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology (Ministry-Guangdong Province Jointly Breeding Base) South China, Guangzhou, 510070, China

    Zhenhong Gu, Honghui Zhu, Xiaolin Xie & Yonghong Wang

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  1. Zhenhong Gu
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  2. Honghui Zhu
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  3. Xiaolin Xie
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  4. Yonghong Wang
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  5. Xiaodi Liu
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Correspondence to Honghui Zhu or Qing Yao.

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Gu, Z., Zhu, H., Xie, X. et al. The feather-degrading bacterial community in two soils as revealed by a specific primer targeting serine-type keratinolytic proteases. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 32, 165 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-016-2125-1

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