Project Number: 3620-63000-003-03
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Feb 21, 2006
End Date: Feb 28, 2010

Objective:
To isolate and identify bacterial isolates from swine feces and manure storage pits that may be involved in production of gaseous emissions and/or malodorous compounds during long-term storage of swine manure. Identifying such bacteria would be beneficial for developing potential intervention strategies for reducing emissions from large-scale swine facilities.

Approach:
The predominant bacterial populations from swine feces and stored manure from swine facilities will be isolated under anaerobic conditions with various media. These isolates will be purified and initially characterized for production of various compounds involved in gaseous emissions such as ammonia, volatile fatty acids, and phenolics. The isolates will then be analyzed using molecular methods to determine their potential identity. Molecular studies will be centered primarily on the 16S rDNA gene sequence determination. Large fragments of the 16S rDNA gene will be amplified by PCR, and generated sequences will be screened against rDNAs in reference libraries. Those sequences representing potential novel organisms will then be subjected to phylogenetic analyses using a variety of treeing methods (e.g., Neighbor-Joining, bootstrap resampling) to determine their taxonomic associations. Based on the results of these investigations, isolates belonging to the new genera/species will be delineated and named as appropriate. Generated novel sequences will be deposited in GenBank to facilitate future comparative studies, and reference strains of novel taxa will be deposited in International Public Culture Collections (U.S. and Europe).