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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, December 1998, p. 4973-4982, Vol. 64, No. 12
Max-Planck-Institut für Marine
Mikrobiologie,
Received 9 July 1998/Accepted 15 September 1998
In situ identification of whole fixed bacterial cells by
hybridization with fluorescently labeled, rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes is often limited by low signal intensities. In addition to an
impermeability of the cell periphery and a low cellular rRNA content,
the three-dimensional structure of the ribosome may hinder the access
of oligonucleotides to their target sites. Until now, a systematic
study on the accessibility of 16S rRNA target sites had not been done.
Here, we report fluorescence intensities obtained with more than 200 oligonucleotide probes (mostly 18-mers) used with whole fixed cells of
Escherichia coli DSM 30083T. Two overlapping
sets of adjacent oligonucleotides, 171 in total, were designed to cover
the full length of the 16S rRNA. The two sets are shifted by 5 to 13 nucleotides. The probes were labeled with carboxyfluorescein, and
signal intensities of hybridized cells were quantified by flow
cytometry. Care was taken that the signal intensity of cells was
dependent solely on the in situ accessibility of probe target sites.
The brightest signal resulted from probe Eco1482, complementary to
positions 1482 to 1499. With this probe, the fluorescence was 1.7 times
brighter than that of the standard bacterial probe EUB338 and 44 times
brighter than that of the worst probe, Eco468. The distribution of
probe-conferred cell fluorescence in six arbitrarily set brightness
classes (classes I to VI; 100 to 81%, 80 to 61%, 60 to 41%, 40 to
21%, 20 to 6%, and 5 to 0% of the brightness with Eco1482,
respectively) was as follows: I, 4%; II, 14%; III, 21%; IV, 29%, V,
19%; and VI, 13%. A more detailed analysis of helices 6, 18, and 23 with additional probes demonstrated that a shift of the target region
by only a few bases could result in a decline of cell fluorescence from >80 to <10%. Considering the high evolutionary conservation of 16S
rRNA, the in situ accessibility map of E. coli should
facilitate a more rational selection of probe target sites for other
species as well.
0099-2240/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Flow Cytometric Analysis of the In Situ
Accessibility of Escherichia coli 16S rRNA for
Fluorescently Labeled Oligonucleotide Probes

*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Celsiusstr. 1, D-28359 Bremen, Germany. Phone: 49 421 2028 930. Fax: 49 421 2028 790. E-mail: ramann{at}mpi-bremen.de.
Present address: Hoechst Marion Roussel, Quality Operations
Microbiology, D-65926 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
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