GENOTYPIC CHARACTERIZATION OF ALCALIGENES XYLOSOXIDANS SUBSP. DENITRIFICANS (AXD HC01) AND FOUR RELATED STRAINS

In symbiont therapy, an insect’s natural symbionts are genetically modified to prevent the transmission of a pathogen, and this strategy is currently under investigation as a way to control the spread of Pierce’s disease. The glassy-winged sharpshooter (Homalodisca coagulata) symbiont used in this research was identified through metabolic tests as Alcaligenes xylosoxidans denitrificans Hc01 (Axd Hc01). Since Axd Hc01 has the potential to be used agronomically, fully describing it genetically as well as metabolically is important for regulatory purposes. In this study, we used sequence data from two highly conserved prokaryotic genes, the 16S rDNA gene and the gyrase B gene, to genetically characterize Axd Hc01 and four of its relatives. These sequences were aligned and used to generate three neighbor-joining phylogenetic trees, two for the 16S gene and one for the gyrase B gene. A preliminary analysis of this data indicates that Axd Hc01 is most closely related to members of the genus Pseudomonas