0000000001051052
AUTHOR
Kristina Lindström
Biological nitrogen fixation for the 21st century
The biodiversity of nitrogen-fixing organisms is huge. Taxonomic and phylogenetic research is needed to structure this diversity, to facilitate communication among scientists, and to increase our understanding of the evolution and biology of diazotrophs. Molecular tools for taxonomic and biodiversity studies of diazotrophic rhizobia, frankiae, cyanobacteria and bacilli are presented in sections 2 to 5. Sections 6 to 9 focus on problems with genus and species assignment.
Inter-laboratory evaluation of the ISO standard 11063 "Soil quality - Method to directly extract DNA from soil samples"
International audience; Extracting DNA directly from micro-organisms living in soil is a crucial step for the molecular analysis of soil microbial communities. However, the use of a plethora of different soil DNA extraction protocols, each with its own bias, makes accurate data comparison difficult. To overcome this problem, a method for soil DNA extraction was proposed to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2006. This method was evaluated by 13 independent European laboratories actively participating in national and international ring tests. The reproducibility of the standardized method for molecular analyses was evaluated by comparing the amount of DNA extracted, …