[ODP-085] Development of a highly specific and quantitative qPCR panel for monitoring of microbiome
It has been revealed that human microbiota contributes to human health by metagenomic analysis with next-generation sequencing-based methods. Once bacteria that should be focused on have been identified, faster and cheaper method is desirable for monitoring them. Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is desirable for monitoring, since this method can detect target bacteria faster at a much lower cost than other methods such as a culturing method and a metagenomic analysis. However, it is still difficult to design specific primers for bacteria in microbial community. A main obstacle for designing specific primers for qPCR is identification of a bacterium’s specific gene sequence from hundreds of microbial genomes. In this background, we developed a system to identify species/strain specific genes from public bacterial genome data1). In this study, we developed qPCR methods for quantification of some human intestinal bacteria. We designed species specific primers which can work in the same annealing condition. With these primer sets, target bacteria were species-specifically quantified under the same PCR condition. There results suggest that a qPCR panel for microbiome monitoring can be constructed using our system. Our approach would help fast and cost-effective microbiome monitoring for such as clinical applications. 1) Yuhara et al., Annual meeting of Japanese society for bacteriology