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Appl. Environ. Microbiol., 12 1996, 4504-4513, Vol 62, No. 12
D Zheng, EW Alm, DA Stahl and L Raskin
Universal oligonucleotide hybridization probes targeting the small- subunit
rRNA are commonly used to quantify total microbial representation in
environmental samples. Universal probes also serve to normalize results
obtained with probes targeting specific phylogenetic groups of
microorganisms. In this study, six universal probes were evaluated for
stability of probe-target duplexes by using rRNA from nine organisms
representing the three domains of Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya.
Domain-specific variations in dissociation temperatures were observed for
all probes. This could lead to a significant bias when these probes are
used to quantify microbial populations in environmental samples. We suggest
lowering the posthybridization wash stringency for two of the universal
probes (S-*-Univ-1390-a-A-18 and S- *-Univ-1392-a-A-15) examined. These two
probes were evaluated with traditional and modified hybridization
conditions to characterize defined mixtures of rRNAs extracted from pure
cultures and rRNA samples obtained from anaerobic digester samples. Probe
S-*-Univ-1390-a-A-18 provided excellent estimations of domain-level
community composition of these samples and is recommended for future use in
microbial ecology studies.
Copyright © 1996, American Society for Microbiology
Characterization of universal small-subunit rRNA hybridization probes for quantitative molecular microbial ecology studies
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign 61801, USA.
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