Soil Microbial Biodiversity Analysis

Various organisms in the soil ecosystem interact with each other to form a complex soil food web, and it is the activities of these soil organisms that make the soil ecosystem have a variety of ecological service functions. Because of their large numbers and complex roles, soil microorganisms occupy an important position in the study of soil biology.

Soil microorganisms include prokaryotic microorganisms such as bacteria, cyanobacteria, actinomycetes, and ultrastructural microorganisms, as well as eukaryotes such as fungi, algae (except cyanobacteria), and lichens. They play a very important role in soil ecosystems as they are the main driving force for the transformation and cycling of soil organic matter (C) and soil nutrients (N, P, etc.), and participate in biochemical processes such as humus formation.

Various factors are affecting the structural composition and diversity of soil microbial communities, especially their functional diversity, which can be broadly classified into two categories: natural and anthropogenic factors.

• Natural factors include vegetation, soil type, temperature, moisture, and pH.
• Anthropogenic factors include pesticides, fertilizer application, and soil tillage practices.

Lifeasible uses two types of methods in soil microbial diversity analysis, biological or chemical-based methods and methods based on modern molecular biology techniques.

Biological or chemical methods

The biological or chemical methods used by Lifeasible include traditional plate counting, fluorescent staining, Biology microplate analysis, PLFA (phospholipid fatty acid) spectroscopy, FAME (fatty acid methyl esters) spectroscopy, etc.

Molecular biology methods

• Molecular labeling methods based on molecular hybridization techniques

Based on FISH (fluorescence in situ hybridization) and isotope labeling, Lifeasible can study the presence or absence, distribution pattern, and abundance of microorganisms in the soil environment with high sensitivity and specificity.

• PCR-based methods

Lifeasible uses these methods to amplify very small amounts of DNA and to analyze the diversity of microorganisms in soil samples by comparing the specificity of the analyzed gene sequences. For example, RAPD (random amplification of polymorphic DNA), AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism), RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism), T-RFLP (terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism), SSCP (single-strand conformation polymorphism), DGGE (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis), TGGE (temperature gradient gel electrophoresis), RISA (ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis), etc.

• Research methods based on DNA sequence determination

Lifeasible analyzes the mutation of specific base sequences, and by combining with bioinformatics, we can conduct comparative data analysis to find out the genetic evolutionary clues of soil microbial diversity using various methods, such as metagenomic sequencing, 16S/18S/ITS (internal transcribed spacer) sequencing, 2b-RAD-M (2b restriction site-associated DNA sequencing for microbiome), etc.

Lifeasible not only applies the above methods to soil microbial diversity analysis, but we can also apply nucleic acid-based analysis and other methods to analyze the culturable microbial community in soil and the whole microbial community in soil according to the range of analyzed objects. We are constantly improving our service system to meet the different needs of our customers. Please contact our staff to develop an optimal analysis plan based on the content of the analysis project you need to perform.