The application of plant protection products has the potential to significantly affect soil microbial community structure and function. However, the extent to which soil microbial communities from different trophic levels exhibit resistance and resilience to such compounds remains poorly understood. The resistance and resilience responses of a range of microbial communities (bacteria, fungi, ar...

Four ruminally cannulated cows were used to compare amino acid (AA) composition of protozoal and bacterial fractions as affected by sampling time and diet. Cows were given once a day restricted feed (80% of ad libitum intake) of 7 kg DM with two successive diets. Diet HB was 65% Cocksfoot hay and 35% pelleted ground barley, and Diet H was 100% Cocksfoot hay. Samples of whole ruminal contents we...

BACKGROUND The goal of the study was to investigate whether cigarette smoking alters oral and nasal microbial diversity, composition, and structure. Twenty-three current smokers and 20 never smokers were recruited. From each subject, nine samples including supra and subgingiva plaque scrapes, saliva, swabs from five soft oral tissue sites, and one nasal swab from both the anterior nares were co...

Microorganisms in the rhizosphere mediate the cycling of nutrients, their enhanced mobilisation and facilitate their uptake, leading to increased root growth, biomass and yield of plants. We examined the promise of beneficial cyanobacteria and eubacteria as microbial inoculants, applied singly or in combination as consortia or biofilms, to improve growth and yields of okra. Interrelationships a...

The gut of many soil arthropods contains a complex and mutualistic microbial community that usually assists the host with digestion. The same is probably true for earthworms, but the nature and function of the microbiota inhabiting their gut are virtually unknown. In this paper, we studied the microbial community in the gut content of the earthworm Lumbricus terrestris L. and in the bulk soil b...

Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (tRFLP) is a potentially high-throughput method for the analysis of complex microbial communities. Comparison of multiple tRFLP profiles to identify shared and unique components of microbial communities however, is done manually, which is both time consuming and error prone. This paper describes a freely accessible web-based program, T-Align (ht...

The effects of expression of Cry endotoxin by Bt corn (transgenic corn engineered to express Bacillus thuringiensis toxin) on soil microbial community structure were assessed in a growth chamber experiment. Two lines of transgenic corn expressing different Cry endotoxins were compared with their respective non-transgenic isolines in three soil types with differing textures. Phospholipid fatty a...

Steroid hormones are prevalent in the environment and have become emerging pollutants, but little is known about their effects on soil microbial community composition function. In present study, three representative soils China were amended with environmentally relevant concentrations of testosterone responses bacterial function assessed using high-throughput sequencing nontargeted metabolomics...