Diversity of extradiol dioxygenases in aromatic-degrading microbial community explored using both culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches.

Culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches were used for extensive retrieval of the extradiol dioxygenase (EDO) gene from the environment to investigate the relationship between the EDO genes from isolated bacteria and the metagenomic EDO genes from which they were isolated. In our previous study, we identified 91 fosmid clones showing EDO enzyme activity using a metagenomic approach. In the present study, we classified all these metagenome-derived EDOs and newly isolated 88 phenol-utilizing bacteria from the same sample and identified four EDO genes from them. Of these, two EDOs had amino acid sequences similar to those reported previously in aromatic-utilizing strains, and one EDO had a sequence almost identical to that of metagenomic EDOs identified in our previous study. Unexpectedly, one EDO showed no similarity to any class I EDOs and was categorized as class II, which has not been found in past metagenomic approaches. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay indicated that the low-abundance class II EDO gene can be enriched by culturing approaches. We conclude that the combined use of the two approaches can explore the gene community more extensively than their individual use.