ABSTRACT
Kornelia Smalla ¤e development of methods to extract DNA directly from soil samples opened new dimensions of studies on microbial communities in soil. ¤e molecular analysis of soil DNA can provide information on the microbial community composition or on the presence and on the relative abundance of functional genes, for example, of genes involved in N-cycling, antibiotic resistance genes, degrading genes, or plasmid replicon-related sequences.
