Soil Bacterial Community Shifts after Chitin Enrichment: An Integrative Metagenomic Approach

Chitin is the second most produced biopolymer on Earth after cellulose. Chitin degrading enzymes are promising but untapped sources for developing novel industrial biocatalysts. Hidden amongst uncultivated micro-organisms, new bacterial enzymes can be discovered and exploited by metagenomic approaches through extensive cloning and screening. Enrichment is also a well-known strategy, as it allows selection of organisms adapted to feed on a specific compound. In this study, we investigated how the soil bacterial community responded to chitin enrichment in a microcosm experiment. An integrative metagenomic approach coupling phylochips and high throughput shotgun pyrosequencing was established in order to assess the taxonomical and functional changes in the soil bacterial community. Results indicate that chitin enrichment leads to an increase of Actinobacteria, γ-proteobacteria and β-proteobacteria suggesting specific selection of chitin degrading bacteria belonging to these classes. Part of enriched bacterial genera were not yet reported to be involved in chitin degradation, like the members from the Micrococcineae sub-order (Actinobacteria). An increase of the observed bacterial diversity was noticed, with detection of specific genera only in chitin treated conditions. The relative proportion of metagenomic sequences related to chitin degradation was significantly increased, even if it represents only a tiny fraction of the sequence diversity found in a soil metagenome.