微生物培养技术无法获得自然生境中99％以上的微生物，而可培养的微生物也仅提供极少的形态学线索，鉴定和生理学特性经常是模糊的。分子生物学技术对不可培养微生物的研究，开启了探索微生物多样性和新资源的大门。DNA杂交、rRNA分子标记测序等已经成为研究分子微生物生态学的常规手段，可以鉴定和描述微生物群落的种群，但却不适于探索微生物复杂群落的动力学。遗传指纹图谱技术允许同时进行多样本的分析，可比较不同生境和随时间变化的微生物群落行为，是传统手段的有力补充。

The 99% of all microorganisms in naturecannot be isolated by standard culture methods without conspicuous external characters to classify them morphologically. In addition, classification based on physiological or biochemical features are often fuzzy. Molecular techniques are used for uncultured microorganisms to explore the diversity of microbial communities and novel resources without the need of cultivation. DNA dynamics and cloning of PCR products obtained from environmental DNA is now routinely used to identify microbial populations in microbial ecology. For practical reasons the approach is not suited to study the complex dynamics of microbial communities in environment. Genetic fingerprinting techniques are better tools, which give complement for the traditional microbiological methods. The methods are rapid and relatively easy to perform, and they allow the simultaneous analysis of multiple samples, which makes it possible to compare the genetic diversity of microbial communities from different habitats, or to study the behaviour of individual communities over time.

Q938.1

重庆市科委应用基础项目 (2 0 0 0 -640 )