CURRENT MOLECULAR TECHNIQUES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS IN MICROBIOLOGY.

Microbiology is an interesting branch of applied sciences and forms an indispensable part of a plethora of other sciences such as biochemistry, genetics, biotechnology, molecular biology etc. This is because our environment is full of microorganisms and the latter maintain a balance of the environmental characteristics. With the advancement in sciences different techniques have been emerged with time to study more detailed processes and more specific microorganisms which in turn were not possible to study with traditional methods. It is a known fact among microbiologist that the culture-dependent methods significantly underestimate the biocomplexity and misrepresent the true composition of microbial communities in the original environment. Hence, may culture-independent molecular microbiology techniques have been developed in the past decades that involve direct extraction of nucleic acids from environmental samples, thus overcoming the difficulties associated with the laboratory cultivation of microorganisms and providing a direct analysis of samples and insight into gene functions. The present proceedings describe current molecular microbiology techniques employed in microbiology and their diverse applications in agriculture, food, clinical and fermentation based industry.

The authors’ intention in preparing this seminar edited book has been to encourage the PG students and enhance their writing skills as it is primarily based on the topics given to them for their seminar series on different molecular techniques and their applications and each chapter covers the complete aspect of the topic. This information is supplemented with illustrations, wherever these are appropriate and helpful. The editors feel that this book being a reasonably comprehensive guide regarding different molecular techniques and their applications in Microbiology, will tailor to the need of the faculty and students of different colleges and universities offering microbiology as a course for their undergraduate or postgraduate degrees.

In a work of this nature, errors of omission and commission are inevitable. Therefore, constructive suggestions, if any, from the readers will be highly appreciated to incorporate in the succeeding edition of this seminar series.