Open AccessValidating T ‐ RFLP as a sensitive and high‐throughput approach to assess bacterial diversity patterns in human anterior nares
Author(s) -
CamarinhaSilva Amélia,
WosOxley Melissa L.,
Jáuregui Ruy,
Becker Karsten,
Pieper Dietmar H.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
fems microbiology ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.377
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1574-6941
pISSN - 0168-6496
DOI - 10.1111/j.1574-6941.2011.01197.x
Subject(s) - biology , terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism , moraxella , moraxella catarrhalis , restriction fragment length polymorphism , computational biology , evolutionary biology , genetics , ecology , bacteria , staphylococcus aureus , gene , genotype
While recent works aimed to thoroughly characterize the bacterial community of the human anterior nares of a few candidates, this work sought to analyse a greater cross‐section by sampling 100 volunteers. After optimizing and validating the method of terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism against six previously pyrosequenced samples, abundant species could be discriminated and their relative abundances measured in a high‐throughput manner. The 100 volunteers could be statistically clustered into 12 groups, where two‐thirds of volunteers shared more than 40% similarity in respect to their bacterial community structure, while the remaining third clustered into smaller groups being dominated by D olosigranulum pigrum , M oraxella spp. or S taphylococcus aureus . M oraxella spp. was present predominantly in women rather than in men. The use of network analysis charting bacterial ecological co‐occurrences revealed new evidence of likely positive associations between some core human nasal species. So, in the age of post ‘omics’ and ‘deep sequencing’, there is still a place for these well‐tried and well‐tested methods that can offer a rapid, reproducible and economical alternative, whereby also yielding valuable new information.