Research Progress in Molecular Identification Technology for Microbial Resources

Abstract

As the most widely distributed and abundant biological resources in the world, microbial resources have been applied in many fields and shown great economic and social values. Although there have been numerous previous studies on microorganisms, the studies could not be further launched owing to limited technical methods. However, the continuous development of microbial detection technologies now provides new approaches for microbial research. In this article, we summarize the molecular identification technologies and their application for microbial resources in China and abroad; these technologies include deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (G+C) mol% identification, nucleic acid hybridization, DNA fingerprinting, nucleic acid amplification, gene chips, and high throughput sequencing. Moreover, we summarize the advantages and disadvantages of each technology and analyze the problems faced by molecular identification of microbial resources, including reliance on laboratory environment, insufficient reproducibility and accuracy of experimental results, and lack of microbial databases. To protect and utilize microbial resources, China should strengthen the research of each identification technology, establish a microbial resource identification platform with independent intellectual property rights, and improve the microbial resource database.

Keywords

• microbial resources, molecular identification
• nucleic acid amplification technique, gene chip technology, high throughput sequencing technology, microbiology database