Importance of MID (microbial Identification)
Microbial identification services are on the upfront serving as a major strength in any form of research or product testing or diagnosis. With state-of-the-art microbiological laboratories, Eurofins offers services in varied domain.
Microbial Identification and its importance
Technological advancements have led to the development of methods for identifying different types of organisms including the microbial world. Molecular techniques have been rapidly used for identifying the microorganisms. The commonly used approach is for sequencing.
One of the major applications for studying microbes is in the clinical biology and so is the need for identifying microorganism in the clinical samples for developing effective antimicrobial therapy.
This approach is also used in QC check in pharma as per FDA, Food testing to identify contaminant/spoilage, Identify new cultured unknown bacteria, and so on.
Sanger sequencing in the identification of microbes
Microbial Identification requires the application of sequencing technologies. Further, for the precise identification of the microbial species, a comparison of the microbial gene sequences is necessary. Currently, one of the most powerful ways for identifying microbial organisms is through the use of ribosomal RNA. Gene sequences of the 16s rRNA is used for identifying bacterial species, while for the fungal species, genes such as ITS (1 and 2) are used.
Identified sequences are stored in NCBI which is used for the process of comparison with the sequenced reads. This is the basis of the Sanger sequencing method. The rRNA gene is selected out from the bacterial isolates which is then amplified and sequenced. The sequenced gene is then compared to available sequences from NCBI databases for the identification.
Sanger sequencing services
The ease of identifying microorganisms lies in the availably of several sequencing services designed effectively for the researchers study.
Also, the analysis can be customized and designed as per the requirement of the customers. Methods applied by Eurofins for identification of bacterial species is the 16S rRNA sequencing approach. While for identifying fungal species, the approach of ITS1, ITS2 or 25s rRNA gene sequencing is applied. The basic service package includes the Quality Control estimate for the sample, sequenced data along with basic analysis, etc. Additional bioinformatics analysis is also offered in different cases that includes the taxonomic identification, SNP analysis etc.
Advantages of microbial Identification
The most important and foremost application of microbial identification lies in the identification and characterization of microorganisms such as virus, fungi, bacteria etc. Identification systems serves a major role in monitoring the environment, controlling cleanroom or even detecting harmful species and strains. Further, once the contaminant information is gathered, it provides the necessary knowledge for the prevention and growth of that microbe.