The persistence of infectious biomolecules in soil constitutes a substantial challenge. This holds particularly true with respect to prions, the causative agents of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) such as scrapie, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or chronic wasting disease (CWD). Various studies have indicated that prions are able to persist in soil for years without los...

Antibiotic resistance genes are typically isolated by cloning from cultured bacteria or by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification from environmental samples. These methods do not access the potential reservoir of undiscovered antibiotic resistance genes harboured by soil bacteria because most soil bacteria are not cultured readily, and PCR detection of antibiotic resistance genes depends...

This paper compares five commercially available DNA extraction methods with respect to DNA extraction efficiency of Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis from soil, manure, and compost and uses an Escherichia coli strain harboring a plasmid expressing green fluorescent protein as a general internal procedural control. Inclusion of this general internal procedural control permitted more accura...

We developed a quantitative competitive PCR (QC-PCR) system to detect and quantify copper-denitrifying bacteria in environmental samples. The primers were specific to copper-dependent nitrite reductase gene (nirK). We were able to detect about 200 copeis of nirK in the presence of abundant non-specific target DNA and about 1.2 x 10(3)Pseudomonas sp. G-179 cells from one gram of sterilized soil ...