Culture-Independent Analysis of Mixed Microbial Communities - Environmental Applications

The importance of mixed microbial communities in the environment is well recognized. The life supporting functions of microbial communities range from recycling elements such as oxygen and carbon to degrading hazardous waste. At the same time, microbial communities can be a source of disease to humans, animals and plants. Today, the challenge to the microbial ecologist is to profile and identify the organism in these communities so that we may have a better understanding of their function and evolution.

An area of recent interest is microbial source tracking. Determining the origin of fecal pollution is crucial in assessing health risks and the actions necessary to remedy the problem. Marine waters can become contaminated by sewer treatment plant discharge and by contaminated freshwater sources such as streams and rivers that feed into it. Humans and animals are key sources of contamination of lakes or reservoirs as a consequence of direct usage.

These applications are described in our Microbiology – Technical Note.

The Technical Note includes examples from the work of Leddy et al.¹ and shows that TMFA is a powerful technique for the separation of Enterococcus species in environmental samples.

Using a genus specific primer set, consensus PCR was employed to amplify selectively Enterococcus species from sewage effluent biofilms. The PCR products were then profiled on the WAVE^® Microbial Analysis System.

References

1. Shields, J., Arps, P. and Leddy, M. Analysis of Environmental Biofilm Communities Using a Denaturing High Performance Liquid Chromatography System, Poster Q-100, American Society of Microbiology 104th General Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 2004