Effect of Diet on Bean Beetle Microbial Communities

 

Megan F. Cole, Tarik Acevedo-Gonzalez, Nicole M. Gerardo, Erica V. Harris, & Christopher W. Beck

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2018, Volume 39

Abstract

Interest in microbiomes has increased greatly over the last several years. Studies of microbiomes involve the integration of laboratory and analysis techniques from a range of sub-disciplines and allow the infusion of ecology into introductory biology laboratories while using molecular techniques. In this exercise, students plate homogenates of bean beetles reared on different host bean types onto different media. They then describe the colonies that are formed to estimate taxonomic diversity. The students also extract DNA from a subset of colonies, perform PCR for the 16s rRNA gene, and analyze the sequence data using BLAST to further identify bacterial species. Finally, students are given data from MiSeq analysis in order to examine the effect of diet on both culturable and unculturable microbiome communities. This final step allows students to work with large datasets.

Keywords:  community ecology, PCR, bioinformatics, species diversity, bean beetle, microbiome

University of Wisconsin, Madison (2017)