Molecular methods for biodiversity analysis of phosphate solubilizing microorganisms (PSM)

Abstract

Although the phosphate solubilizing potential is not a very common characteristic among microorganisms, phosphate solubilizers belonging to diverse groups of microorganisms, especially bacteria, are known. The ecological role of these microorganisms in soil is very important, as they take part in the biogeochemical cycles of the main nutrient elements in the ecosystems. Thus, it is necessary to study the composition and dynamics of these microbial populations to reach a better understanding of soil microbial diversity and nutrient uptake by plants. The study of populations of microorganisms, which share the common characteristic of phosphate solubilization has great complexity, because they belong to very diverse groups sometimes not closely related under a phylogenetic point of view. Therefore good techniques are needed to perform the analysis and identification of PSM populations. The molecular techniques based on nucleic acid composition are excellent tools for this purpose, as they are precise, reproducible and not dependent on culture media composition or growth phase of microorganisms. In this paper main molecular methods based on electrophoresis of nucleic acids as LMW RNA profiling and PCR-based techniques specially DNA involving approaches are reviewed and discussed, highlighting the main advantages and drawbacks of the different methods.