title: Understanding molecular identification and polyphasic taxonomic approaches for genetic relatedness and phylogenetic relationships of microorganisms.
abstract: The major proportion of earth's biological diversity is inhabited by microorganisms and they play a useful role in diversified environments. However, taxonomy of microorganisms is progressing at a snail's pace, thus less than 1% of the microbial population has been identified so far. The major problem associated with this is due to a lack of uniform, reliable, advanced, and common to all practices for microbial identification and systematic studies. However, recent advances have developed many useful techniques taking into account the house-keeping genes as well as targeting other gene catalogues (16S rRNA, rpoA, rpoB, gyrA, gyrB etc. in case of bacteria and 26S, 28S, β-tubulin gene in case of fungi). Some uncultivable approaches using much advanced techniques like flow cytometry and gel based techniques have also been used to decipher microbial diversity. However, all these techniques have their corresponding pros and cons. In this regard, a polyphasic taxonomic approach is advantageous because it exploits simultaneously both conventional as well as molecular identification techniques. In this review, certain aspects of the merits and limitations of different methods for molecular identification and systematics of microorganisms have been discussed. The major advantages of the polyphasic approach have also been described taking into account certain groups of bacteria as case studies to arrive at a consensus approach to microbial identification.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Ecology (LEnME), Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769 008, Odisha, India. Electronic address: surajit@nitrkl.ac.in.
authors.forename: Surajit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Das
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Ecology (LEnME), Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769 008, Odisha, India.
authors.forename: Hirak R
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Dash
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Ecology (LEnME), Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769 008, Odisha, India.
authors.forename: Neelam
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mangwani
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Ecology (LEnME), Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769 008, Odisha, India.
authors.forename: Jaya
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chakraborty
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Ecology (LEnME), Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769 008, Odisha, India.
authors.forename: Supriya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kumari
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques; D044822:Biodiversity; D005658:Fungi / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D020043:Genes, Essential; D054892:Metagenome; D058889:Molecular Typing / Q000379:methods; D010802:Phylogeny; D020543:Proteome; D040901:Proteomics
chemical_list: D020543:Proteome
keywords: Bacteria; Fungi; Gene sequencing; Molecular identification; Polyphasic taxonomy