Molecular detection of bacteria in plant tissues, using universal 16S ribosomal DNA degenerated primers

Highly specific, sensitive and rapid tests are required for the detection and identification of covert bacterial contaminations in plant tissue cultures. Current methods available for this purpose are tedious, time consuming, highly error prone, expensive, require advanced technical expertise and are sometimes ineffective. We report here the development of a sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based method for the rapid detection and identification of bacteria occurring in plant tissue cultures. A total of 121 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) coding regions from 14 different groups of bacteria, algae and plants, available in the Gene Bank/European Molecular Biology Laboratory databases, were aligned and several conserved DNA sequences of bacterial origin were identified. From those, five degenerated primers were designed in order to amplify only the bacterial DNA present in mixed plant/bacteria genomic DNA extracts. A known amount of bacterial suspension of either covert Pseudomonas or covert Bacillus were added to in vitro plant leaves and total plant/bacterial DNA extracted using three different methods to determine the lowest number of bacteria required to be present in order to allow their detection. The highest sensitivity of the bacterial cell detection was 2.5 × 10⁶ cells of both Bacillus and Pseudomonas inoculums, using template DNA prepared by the MiniPrep method. Generation of PCR amplification fragments was achieved only for the 16S rDNA bacterial gene by using four combinations of degenerated primers. Successive sequence analysis of these amplified fragments led to the rapid detection and molecular identification of bacteria covertly associated with plants.