Abstract:Because of the difficulty associated with isolating and culturing bacteria from environmental samples, alternative methods based on molecular techniques have been developed to describe and identify microbial communities. Recent years have witnessed a rapid development of DNA-based methods for community analysis such as PCR amplification, clone libraries, fluorescent %in-situ% hybridisation, restriction fragment length polymorphism, denaturing and temperature gradient gel electrophoresis. ;DGGE has been wide...