Exam 27: Methods in Microbial Ecology

Determining the functional nature of a microbial community by analysis of bulk DNA samples extracted from environmental samples may be misleading for all of the following reasons except:

The discrepancy between the number of microbial cells observed by microscopic examination and the number of colonies that can be cultivated from the same natural sample may be due to

The reporter gene most commonly used to monitor changes in the physical microenvironment for a single microorganism is the

Phylogenetic oligonucleotide arrays (POAs) contain rRNA sequences as probes and are used as a means to detect complementary rRNA sequences from the environment.

When fluorescently labeled oligonucleotides that are known to be specific to the microbe of interest are used to label natural samples, the technique is known as

Recent evidence suggests that most microbial communities have many individuals representing at least ______ taxa.

Optical tweezers can be used to

_______ _______ arrays are used to assess the diversity of a microbial population.

Which of the following techniques uses PCR primers representing the different 16S rRNA genes of interest, enabling the detection of multiple SSU rRNA genes and thus multiple microbial genera?

The level of specific mRNA, and therefore the expression of a given gene in a particular ecosystem, can be evaluated in the environment using in situ reverse transcriptase (ISRT)-FISH.