Gene pool of the secondary metabolism in soil bacterial communities

The need for new antibiotics and other biologically active compounds is the reason for an increased interest in secondary metabolites of soil bacteria. The phylum Actinobacteria has the dominant position in the soil environment thanks to the potential of producing a broad spectrum of antibiotics and the presence of a number of defense mechanisms preventing the effects of antibiotics. The aim of this thesis was to determine the number of copies of selected secondary metabolic genes in the soils of two sites using designed primers and primers from literature. The design of effective new primers for the detection of selected genes in the soil environment was not achieved in this work, and therefore only primers from literature that had been verified for their specificity were used. In samples taken from soil profiles of two sites, abundances of bacteria, actinobacteria, type II polyketide synthase genes and Erm methyltransferase genes mediating resistance to MLSB antibiotics (macrolides, lincosamides and streptogramins B) were determined by digital PCR. The comparison of the determined copy numbers gave an information about the structure of the bacterial community and the relative abundance of bacteria carrying selected secondary metabolic genes depending on the soil condition changes due to the..