Bacteriology & Antibiotics

Bacterial Identification

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Accurate and definitive microorganism identification, including bacterial identification and pathogen detection, is essential for correct disease diagnosis, treatment of infection and trace-back of disease outbreaks associated with microbial infections. Bacterial identification is used in a wide variety of applications including microbial forensics, criminal investigations, bio-terrorism threats and environmental studies. Traditional methods of bacterial identification rely on phenotypic identification of the causative organism using gram staining, culture and biochemical methods. However, these methods of bacterial identification suffer from two major drawbacks. First, they can be used only for organisms that can be cultivated in vitro. Second, some strains exhibit unique biochemical characteristics that do not fit into patterns that have been used as a characteristic of any known genus and species. In the past decade or so, molecular techniques have proven beneficial in overcoming some limitations of traditional phenotypic procedures for the detection and characterization of bacterial phenotypes. Several non-culture based methods have emerged in the past 15 years. Real time PCR and microarrays are currently the most commonly employed molecular techniques. Real time PCR is highly sensitive and allows quantitation of bacteria at a species level. Microarray based bacterial identification relies on the hybridization of preamplified bacterial DNA sequences to arrayed species-specific oligonucleotides. Each probe is tagged with a different colored dye which fluoresces upon hybridization.