Recent advances and novel applications in microbial diversity estimation based on DNA analysis methods.

This review focuses on recent patents on the exploration and quantification of microbial diversity. Only the patents based on DNA analysis are considered. In general terms, the analysis of environmental samples can be investigated by using three main approaches: microarrays based technologies, genomes/metagenomes comparison and amplification and detection of operative taxonomic units. All patents can relate to the estimation of the microbial diversity, however, many of them were initially designed to detect important medical or agronomic microorganisms. Here, we briefly review recent technological achievements for DNA analysis that offer great potentials for the identification of species.