Functional genes of microorganisms, comprehending the dynamics of agricultural ecosystems

Abstract

The microbial composition of different types, in ecosystems (including agro-ecosystems), has been investigated in a rapidly growing number of studies in the past few years. The importance of microorganisms, regarding the maintenance and stability of nutrients in agroecosystems, is a key to maintain the sustainability of a crop. Molecular tools to study microbial communities are possible through many methods such as RISA, DGGE, TGGE, clone libraries, T-RFLP, RAPD, SSCP and more recently NGS (Next-Generation Sequencing). DGGE is widely employed to characterize the diversity and the community dynamics of microorganisms in the environment, making possible to find out specific groups through functional genes, allowing access to data that cannot be obtained by cultural methods. The aim of this paper is to review the functional groups related to agroecosystems and to indicate the critical choice of DNA primers pairs and targeted DNA regions that may be used in PCR-based methods such as the DGGE technique in order to evaluate the microbial communities in a variety of environments.