MAR-FISH Technique and Its Application in Study of Environmental Microbial Community and Function / 微生物学通报

ABSTRACT

The major goal of microbial ecology is to study the structure and function of complex micro-bial communities. New molecular biological techniques have been successfully applied to analyze mi-crobial community structure. However they do not provide information on the physiologic properties of the detected microorganisms. A new tool for structure-function analyses in microbial ecology, micro-autoradiography combined with fluorescence in situ hybridization (MAR-FISH) can be used to simul-taneously examine the phylogenetic identity and the specific activity of microorganisms within a com-plex microbial community at a single-cell level. This article reviews the principle, experimental steps of MAR-FISH technique. The application of this technique in study of the environmental microbial com-munity and function is also summarized.