Bacteria associated with plants are diverse in their ability to affect plant health, their genotypic and phenotypic characteristics and their phylogeny. These bacteria are typically members of complex microbial communities, with only a few establishing pure clonal populations within a plant. Majority of research on plant associated bacteria has focused on phytopathogens and diazotrophic photosymbions. Increased interest in the diversity of organisms associated with plant has induced developement of several tools to assess their diversity. It is clear that many plant associated microbes, even those that comprise only a small proportion of a community, can have functions that are of agricultural or environmental importance. Technical advances in microbial ecology and genomics have been paralleled by advances in our understanding of the structure and dynamics of these microbial communities and in the molecular basis of plant microbe and microbe- microbe interactions.

What is PLASBID?
PLASBID is an attempt to consolidate information available on bacteria reported to be associated with plants. It contains nucleotide sequences belonging to 16S rRNA. The sequence information, G + C content of each sequence are given, and also a link to NCBI database for additional information. You can also see the bacterial taxonomy and their salient features in brief.

The sequence level identification of the bacterial species can be done with the Bacterial Identification Tool. It does a sequence similarity search using BLAST and outputs the results based on the percentage of similarity. The sequence provided by the user is searched against PLASBID 16S rRNA nucleotide database and identifies the species based on their sequence similarity. The search involves only 16S rRNA nucleotide sequences.

The information regarding the published primers of plant associated bacteria can be obtained from Primer Information Tool. It helps the user to select species or genus of their interest and view the primer as well as the associated information such as GC content, melting temperature and molecular weight. Primer Analyzer tool that helps to calculate the melting temperature, GC content, salt adjusted temperature and molecular weight of the sequence provided by the user is also included under this section.

Restriction Analyzer is designed to provide the information regarding the restriction enzyme and its cutting sites based on the sequence entered by the user. Restriction Analyzer gives only type II restriction enzymes.

A Sequence Analyzer that performs sequence manipulations such as finding the reverse sequence, compliment sequence, pattern searching etc is also another functionality of PLASBID.

PLASBID also welcomes the submissions of new 16S rRNA sequences and primer information. The submitted sequences and primer information will be added to our database after verification. An acknowledgement will be sent to the concerned people through mail if their sequence has been accepted.