The book chapter covers diversity of aerobic spore-forming bacteria in soil which is determined by physiological characterisation of laboratory isolates and by cultivation-independent molecular techniques that have now transformed studies of soil bacterial diversity. The article describes the insight that molecular approaches are providing on biogeography of soil bacteria and the important roles of microbial communication, through signalling compounds, spatial scale and horizontal gene transfer on bacterial evolution, ecotype formation and speciation.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3897720
Results on quurom sensing in Bacillus subtilis at microgeographical scale as well as diversification of this system and other phenotypic traits (colony morphology, metabolic profiles, frequency of transformation) in natural isolates of B. subtilis was presented in a 30 minute lecture at the 4th European Spores Conference in Cortona, Italy and published as an abstract in the Conference book.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3815288