The DGGE bands were excised with a sterile scalpel, and the DNA from each band was eluted overnight at 4 °C in 20 μl of sterile water. The eluted DNA (2 μl) was re-amplified using the conditions described above (Hu et al. 2009). The resulting PCR products were analyzed by DGGE to confirm isolation of the expected products. The samples that yielded a single band co-migrating with that of the original sample were excised, amplified with the primers without the GC clamp, purified and sent to Genscript Company (Nanjing, China) for sequencing. The recovered sequences were aligned with bacteria and fungi gene fragments available from databases of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). BLAST searches in GenBank were used to find the closest known relatives of the partial bacteria and fungus sequences.