Monsanto Technology LLC

David B Carson

James F Rice

PCR-based monitoring of microorganisms in systems for the biological treatment of wastewater. In particular, measuring both the abundance and expression of indicator/effector genes or gene combinations, where expression of an 'effector' gene correlates with the degradative activity of a particular microbial sample, and where the abundance of an 'indicator' gene correlates with the abundance of microbe. Effector gene expression is measured by competitive quantitative RT-PCR, and indicator gene abundance is measured by competitive quantitative PCR. The indicator and effector genes may be the same or different genes. In one embodiment, the indicator and effector gene are sequences from the glyphosate oxidoreductase (gox) gene and the quantitative techniques employed are competitive quantitative PCR and competitive quantitative RT-PCR.

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St. Louis, MO, United States of America

David B Carson