New primers for detecting and quantifying denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidation archaea in different ecological niches

The significance of ANME-2d in methane sink in the environment has been overlooked, and there was no any study evaluating the distribution of ANME-2d in the environment. New primers were thus needed to be designed for following research. In this paper, a pair of primers (DP397F and DP569R) was designed to quantify ANME-2d. The specificity and amplification efficiency of this primer pair were acceptable. PCR amplification of another pair of primers (DP142F and DP779R) generated a single, bright targeted band from the enrichment sample, but yielded faint, multiple bands from the environmental samples. Nested PCR was conducted using the primers DP142F/DP779R in the first round and DP142F/DP569R in the second round, which generated a bright targeted band. Further phylogenetic analysis showed that these targeted bands were ANME-2d-related sequences. Real-time PCR showed that the copies of the 16s ribosomal RNA gene of ANME-2d in these samples ranged from 3.72 × 104 to 2.30 × 105 copies μg−1 DNA, indicating that the percentage of ANME-2d was greatest in a polluted river sample and least in a rice paddy sample. These results demonstrate that the newly developed real-time PCR primers could sufficiently quantify ANME-2d and that nested PCR with an appropriate combination of the new primers could successfully detect ANME-2d in environmental samples; the latter finding suggests that ANME-2d may spread in environments.