ABSTRACT
The enormous development within tools and techniques based on molecular biology for culture-independent characterization of complex microbial societies has consequently been essential for the much deeper understanding of the complex interplay between host, environment and GM during recent years.3-5 Furthermore, it has led to an increased understanding of how the GM influences the reliability of animal models for the study of human diseases.6-8
5.1 Why molecular biology-based methods? ............................................ 91 5.2 RNA and DNA storage and extraction ................................................ 92 5.3 Denaturing and temperature gradient gel electrophoresis .............. 92 5.4 Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis ....... 95 5.5 Clone library analysis............................................................................. 95 5.6 High-throughput sequencing ............................................................... 97 5.7 Quantitative real-time PCR ................................................................... 99 References ........................................................................................................ 100
Here, a brief introduction is given to the different molecular biologybased, culture-independent methods that are most widely used for GM characterization.
