Nucleic acid extraction, oligonucleotide probes and PCR methods

Abstract

Bacteria, fungi and protozoa, present in rumen and gastrointestinal (GI) tracts, interact with feed, with each other, and with their host animals, resulting in a complex symbiotic microbiota of distinctive composition and structure [11, 20, 32, 39, 46]. Such microbiota is dynamic and highly responsive to a variety of biotic and abiotic factors, such as diet, feed additives, age, health and physiological status of the host animal, geographical locations, season and feeding regimen (reviewed in Ref. [39]). This symbiotic microbiota has been the focus of microbial research for over half a century in search for improved ruminant nutrition. Before the advent of molecular biology techniques, microorganisms in rumen and GI tracts, as in other habitats, were studied with cultivation-based techniques, which only allows for the isolation and characterization of a limited number of readily culturable species. As estimated, there are more than 400 species of bacteria and up to 100 species of protozoa and fungi inhabiting rumen and GI tracts [32, 39, 46]. In human GI tracts, as much as 60% of these members cannot be isolated on agar plates and, thus, remain unknown [12, 47]. In ruminants, although it is not known, the culturable species of the microbiota are probably in the same range. Even among the culturable species, probably only some of them have been isolated and described. The application of cultivation-independent, more sensitive and accurate molecular techniques to the study of ruminal and GI microorganisms provided an alternative to directly examining the diversity and the community structure of ruminal and GI microbiota on the basis of genotypes, instead of phenotypes [41, 45]. Both polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods, such as denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis, terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, cloning and sequencing of PCR amplicons and amplified 16S ribosomal DNA restriction analysis, and hybridization-based methods, such as RNA-targeted hybridization, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), and microarray, have been employed. The application of these molecular techniques has