Subtractive hybridization magnetic bead capture: A new technique for the recovery of full-length ORFs from the metagenome

Abstract

A new method for the recovery of full-length open reading frames from metagenomic nucleic acid samples is reported. This technique, based on subtractive hybridization magnetic bead capture technology, has the potential to access multiple gene variants from a single amplification reaction. It is now widely accepted that classical microbiological methods provide only limited access to the true microbial biodiversity (less than 1%) [1]. The desire to access a higher proportion of the metagenome [2] has led to the development of efficient environmental nucleic acid extraction technologies and to a range of sequence-dependent and sequence-independent gene discovery techniques [3]. These methods [2, 4] avoid many of the limitations of culture-dependent gene targeting. © 2007 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.