Introduction to Microbial Quantitation, Community Profiling, and Array Approaches

Abstract

Since the discovery of Van Leeuwenhoek’s “wee animalcules,” microbiologists have explored microbial communities to identify who is where, when, why, and how. Although microbial community analyses were conducted with cultivation-based methods for most of microbiology’s history, molecular methods have transformed this discipline over the past few decades. Specifically, the ability to extract and analyze biomarkers from environmental samples, including lipids, RNA, and DNA, enable characterization of microbial communities more completely, circumventing many cultivation-based limitations. Microbiologists now find themselves in an era of rapid experimentation and discovery because the diversity of microbial communities no longer precludes effective experimental design and analysis. Microbial community analysis is in a boom era and the protocols in this volume reflect the wide range of methods available for use by microbiologists to better understand microbial communities in environmental samples.