| Title | Use of Denaturing High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (DHPLC) to Characterize the Bacterial and Fungal Airway Microbiota of Cystic Fibrosis Patients |
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| Author | Jérôme Mounier1, Audrey Gouëllo1, Marlène Keravec1, Solène Le Gal1,2, Grégory Pacini1, Stella Debaets1, Gilles Nevez1,2, Gilles Rault3, Georges Barbier1, and Geneviève Héry-Arnaud1,2* |
| Address | 1Université de Brest, EA 3882-Laboratoire Universitaire de Biodiversité et Ecologie Microbienne, SFR148 ScInBioS, Brest, F-29200, France, 2CHRU Brest, Département de Bactériologie-Virologie, Hygiène Hospitalière et Parasitologie-Mycologie, Brest, F-29200, France, 3Centre de Perharidy, CRCM mixte, Roscoff, F-29680, France |
| Bibliography | Journal of Microbiology, 52(4),307–314, 2014, |
| DOI | 10.1007/s12275-014-3425-5 |
| Key Words | denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography, airway microbiota, cystic fibrosis, cloning/sequencing, bacteria, fungi |
| Abstract | The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) to characterize cystic fibrosis (CF) airway microbiota including both bacteria and fungi. DHPLC conditions were first optimized using a mixture of V6, V7 and V8 region 16S rRNA gene PCR amplicons from 18 bacterial species commonly found in CF patients. Then, the microbial diversity of 4 sputum samples from 4 CF patients was analyzed using cultural methods, cloning/sequencing (for bacteria only) and DHPLC peak fraction collection/sequencing. DHPLC analysis allowed identifying more bacterial and fungal species than the classical culture methods, including well-recognized pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Even if a lower number of bacterial Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) was identified by DHPLC, it allowed to find OTUs unidentified by cloning/sequencing. The combination of both techniques permitted to correlate the majority of DHPLC peaks to defined OTUs. Finally, although Aspergillus fumigatus detection using DHPLC can still be improved, this technique clearly allowed to identify a higher number of fungal species versus classical culture-based methods. To conclude, DHPLC provided meaningful additional data concerning pathogenic bacteria and fungi as well as fastidious microorganisms present within the CF respiratory tract. DHPLC can be considered as a complementary technique to culture-dependent analyses in routine microbiological laboratories. |