High-throughput techniques for analyzing complex bacterial communities

Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology
David A Stahl

Abstract

A more complete understanding of microbial diversity and the environmental processes they control will require much more than a biotic inventory. It will require a deeper understanding of the basic features of systems organization and inter-population interactions. Communities, not total biomass, control net process rates driving the biogeochemical cycles sustaining the biosphere. Although the general patterns of macroorganismal diversity are relatively well known, spatial and temporal patterns of microorganismal diversity are essentially unknown. Having tools capable of resolving these patterns is a prerequisite to developing an understanding of the relationship between community structure and function. This talk discusses conceptual and technical developments that now provide the framework for systematically resolving temporal and spatial patterns of microorganisms and relating those patterns to processes at local and system levels. Of particular emphasis will be ongoing studies using highly parallel analyses with DNA microarrays for intensive monitoring of microbial populations in environmental systems. Although microarray technology is reasonably well established for studies of model organisms in well-defined laboratory set...Continue Reading

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