AK07_KS
Soil is a diverse habitat for microbial life, some of which harbor gene clusters that encode bioactive small molecules that include the majority of natural-product antibiotics. Direct sequencing of conserved domains from bulk-captured soil DNA allows for direct comparison of the biosynthetic clusters contained in different soil metagenomes.  DNA was harvested from a number of soils around the world and degenerate primers targeting conserved domains in small molecule biosynthesis were used to generate PCR amplicons that were subsequntyle sequenced using the 454 technology. Sampels were barcoded and pooled in runs, but have been split up by Sample and by primersetfor the convenience of downstream analysis. The initial set of experiments target the Adenlyation Domain (AD) and Ketosynthase Domain (KS) of non ribosomal peptide synthetases and polyketide syntheses.