Identification of Bacteria by Genetic Methods

Two principal types of nucleic acid-based methods, nucleic acid hybridization and polymerase chain reaction (PCR), are commonly used for the rapid identification of bacteria. A few other nucleic acid-based methods will also be mentioned. 

Nucleic acid hybridization methods use oligonucleotide DNA probes with sequences complementary to a portion of the nucleic acid of the target bacterium38,60 and designed to hybridize with immobilized DNA or RNA on a membrane. After any unbound probe has been washed off, the hybridized probe can be detected.64 66 

A variation on this method, called fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), uses fluorescent-labeled DNA and RNA probes for detection and visualization of single cells by microscopy or flow cytometry.7 80 The FISH technique is popular because of its sensitivity and speed of visualization fluorescent dyes can be used to produce probes with different colors for simultaneous detection of several organisms.76,81,82 

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is one of the most important techniques for rapid bacterial identification. It consists of repeated cycles of enzymatic reactions in a thermal cycler (PCR machine) that copies DNA strands many times. The DNA amplified in one PCR cycle is used as a template for the next cycle. This results in an exponential increase of the desired target 

83 which produces one million or more copies of amplified DNA in a short time. For identification of bacteria, PCR can be used to amplify DNA either after extraction from a sample or after lysis of the cells.83,84 Methods using washing, filtration, or magnetic beads with specific antibodies can be used to collect bacterial cells for PCR.85,86 PCR can be modified for the detection of bacteria from various sources32 and can even amplify DNA from dead cells.87 

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