Award details

Biodiversity of bacteria & fungi in soils subjected to different stress, pollution & agricultural inputs: improved PCR fingerprinting methods

Reference	BBS/E/C/00031762
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Penny Hirsch
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Rothamsted Research
Department	Rothamsted Research Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	40,079
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/10/1997
End date	31/03/1999
Duration	18 months

Abstract

Soil microorganisms underpin soil fertility, including nutrient cycling, plant nutrition and health, and have an important influence of the efficacy of biocontrol inoculants. The relationship between microbial numbers, genetic diversity and physiological potential, and how these might be affected by pollution, changes in agricultural practices including the use of biological control agents, climate, or other variables is not well understood. The size of the microbial biomass" remains fairly stable over time in arable soils, although the composition of the population and the diversity of the organisms may vary, with potential implications for long- term sustainability of soil fertility. The project involves development, comparison and assessment of methods to compare the genetic and functional diversity of soil microorganisms; and identification of potential indicators of differences between soils. To establish methodologies, DNA fingerprints must be obtained for bacteria and fungi that can easily be cultured on selective agar (eg. pseudomonads) or selected by other methods (eg. rhizobia, selected via host plant nodulation). Approaches encompass genetic fingerprinting methods for bacteria and fungi including RFLP and PCR-based fingerprinting (ERIC, REP, primers and oligoprobes utilizing DNA sequence similarities and differences in the ribosomal genes); and also biochemical/physiological tests involving substrate utilization by individual isolates and communities (e.g. BIOLOG plates). Methods to archive and analyse the fingerprint data are included. The project has some links to previous Project 031469, and to work in Programme 210. Objectives 1996 Non. New project in 1997. 1997 Obj. Develop REP-PCR fingerprinting of bacterial and fungal isolates using fluorescent primers and the ABI sequencer with internal size markers in each track, to obtain a fingerprint database. Verify the method on control fungal and bacterial strains, and apply it to field soil isolates from comparable plots with different treatments. Compare the method with more conventiona lapproaches including fingerprinting using protein profiles on PAGE- SDS gels. Data from the samples taken from Woburn and Stoke Bardolph will be analysed and the fingerprint data compared. From this, the diversity of culturable bacteria and fungi in soils with different levels of available heavy metals will be estimated. Methods will be assessed and the most practical approaches will be applied to investigate the properties of microbial populations in soils with different combinations of plant/nematode/biocontrol fungus."

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Plant & Microbial Sciences (PMS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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