Development and Application of New Oligonucleotide Probes for the In situ Identification and Localisation of Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria

Many diverse nitrogen fixing, plant associated bacteria were isolated all over the world from various non legumes plants. A lot of different species were commonly found in the rhizosphere soil, the rhizoplane or in the interior of the plants. The classification and identification of diazotrophic bacterial isolates with classical microbiological methods is often difficult and time consuming. Therefore we developed new 16S rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes for the fluorescence in situ hybridization of bacteria belonging to the alphaand beta-subclasses of Proteobacteria.