Cultivation-dependent and -independent approaches for determining bacterial diversity in heavy-metal-contaminated soil.

ABSTRACT: In recent years, culture-independent methods have been used in preference to traditional isolation techniques for microbial community analysis. However, it is questionable whether uncultured organisms from a given sample are important for determining the impact of anthropogenic stress on indigenous communities. To investigate this, soil samples were taken from a site with patchy metal contamination, and the bacterial community structure was assessed with a variety of approaches. There were small differences in microscopic epifluorescence bacterial counts. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) profiles of 16S rRNA gene fragments (16S-DGGE) amplified directly from soil samples were highly similar. A clone library generated from the most contaminated sample revealed a diverse bacteri

SUBMITTER: Ellis RJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC161537 | biostudies-literature | 2003 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature