Biotechnology Bulletin ›› 2017, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (10): 26-32.doi: 10.13560/j.cnki.biotech.bull.1985.2017-0550

• Review • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Research Progress on in situ Detection Methods of Microorganisms

SONG Wei-feng, LI Ming-cong, GAO Zheng   

  1. School of Life Science,Shandong Agricultural University,State Key Laboratory of Crop Biology,Tai’an 271000
  • Received:2017-07-02 Online:2017-10-29 Published:2017-10-29
  • Contact: 高峥,男,博士,副教授,研究方向:微生物生态与环境微生物学;E-mail:gaozheng@sdau.edu.cn

Abstract: As major participants in ecosystem material cycle and energy flow,microorganisms play an important role in the ecosystem. However,the proportion of the cultivable microorganism under the existing technology is very small,which limits the exploit of microbial resources. At present,there are a number of approaches that can avoid the problem of uncultured microorganisms,which are designed to study in situ microbial activity. Regarding this,we summarized some research methods of studying in situ microbial ecology,allowing it convenient to reasonably use these methods in the future. This article introduces the corresponding microbial detection methods of BrdU-labeling,DNA-SIP,fluorescence in situ hybridization(FISH),and environmental transcriptome from DNA level,RNA level and protein level,respectively,and compares their advantages and disadvantages. It also introduces how to apply these methods combined with popular high-throughput sequencing and single cell sequencing technology to capture the in situ activity of microbial groups. At the same time,comparing the characteristics of these methods,so that we can more clearly understand the choice of different methods under different scenarios. These modified methods combined with other methods will be conducive to solve many have-been or will-happen problems in the study of microbial ecology. The ecosystems on the earth are complex and huge,in which the microbial populations vary. A variety of in situ detection methods have made a more realistic and effective description for the physiology and ecology of microorganisms,which will become a powerful tool for the study of microorganisms.

Key words: microbial detection in sit, BrdU-labeling, DNA-SIP, fluorescence in situ hybridization, metagenome, transcriptome, BONCAT