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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, December 1999, p. 5403-5408, Vol. 65, No. 12
Department of Land, Air and Water
Resources1 and Stable Isotope
Facility,2 University of California, Davis,
California 95616
Received 12 May 1999/Accepted 27 September 1999
Phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis of a soil microbial
community was coupled with 13C isotope tracer analysis to
measure the community's response to addition of 35 µg of
[13C]toluene ml of soil solution
0099-2240/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Linking Toluene Degradation with Specific Microbial
Populations in Soil
1. After
119 h of incubation with toluene, 96% of the incorporated 13C was detected in only 16 of the total 59 PLFAs (27%)
extracted from the soil. Of the total 13C-enriched PLFAs,
85% were identical to the PLFAs contained in a toluene-metabolizing
bacterium isolated from the same soil. In contrast, the majority of the
soil PLFAs (91%) became labeled when the same soil was incubated with
[13C]glucose. Our study showed that coupling
13C tracer analysis with PLFA analysis is an effective
technique for distinguishing a specific microbial population involved
in metabolism of a labeled substrate in complex environments such as soil.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Land, Air and Water Resources, 1 Shields Ave., University of
California, Davis, CA 95616. Phone: (530) 752-4632. Fax: (530)
752-1552. E-mail: kmscow{at}ucdavis.edu.
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