Assessing microbial community diversity using amplicon length heterogeneity polymerase chain reaction

Mills, D.K. and Entry, J.A. and Gillevet, P.M. (2007) Assessing microbial community diversity using amplicon length heterogeneity polymerase chain reaction. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 71(2):572-578.

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Abstract

It is thought that a microbial community is an assemblage of organisms, genes, and gene
functions. Transient, acute signals such as excessive nutrient loads or disturbance and chronic
signals such as seasonal temperature or rainfall impact the total environmental system. The
goal of many microbial ecologists is to determine if a finely resolved study of microbial
dynamics can be used as a large-scale biosensor to follow diversity patterns in the environment.
With the development of new genomic tools, community-level studies have been
designed that can interrogate the finer details of the biological components of a given habitat.
Amplicon length heterogeneity polymerase chain reaction (LH-PCR) interrogates the
hypervariable domains of the ribosomal small-subunit genes and separates these domains
based on the naturally occurring sequence lengths of DNA. The amplicons are phylogenetically
relevant in that the various amplicons generated can be directly associated with specific
taxonomic sequences archived in the databases. The application of the LH-PCR technique as
a monitoring tool for microbial ecology has been shown to enhance and extend the current
understanding of the dynamics of microbial communities in their specific environments.

Item Type:	Article
NWISRL Publication Number:	1201
Subjects:	Research methodology Mass Import - autoclassified (may be erroneous)
Depositing User:	Dan Stieneke
Date Deposited:	11 Mar 2008 19:01
Last Modified:	01 Nov 2016 15:21
Item ID:	46
URI:	https://eprints.nwisrl.ars.usda.gov/id/eprint/46