In silico evaluation and testing of fluorescence in situ hybridization 16S rRNA probes for Staphylococcus aureus

Thomas S. Lawson*, Russell E. Connally, Subramanyam Vemulpad, James A. Piper

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: Staphylococcus aureus is a clinically important pathogen. A small number of whole-cell fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) probes have been reported to detect S. aureus. New online computational tools for in silico design and testing make it possible to assess candidate FISH probes for S. aureus. Materials and Methods: Six online tools, NCBI-Nucleotide, Ribosomal Database Project, NCBI-Blast, Reverse-Complement, Probecheck, and mathFISH, were employed in a workflow to evaluate FISH probes for S. aureus. A previously reported probe, Staaur-16S69, was compared to a new probe, KT18-16S68, predicted by mathFISH to have the same performance. Results: A number of new probes for S. aureus were predicted to perform as well or better in silico as those previously reported. When tested in a FISH assay, Staaur and a new probe, KT18, were found to have the same performance. Conclusion: Existing and new FISH probes for S. aureus were found to be accurately identified and characterized with online computational tools. In silico evaluation of probes has the potential to reduce the time spent evaluating probes in the laboratory.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)729-734
Number of pages6
JournalLaboratory Medicine
Volume42
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2011

Keywords

  • flurorescence in situ hybridization
  • FISH
  • hybridization efficiency
  • mathFISH
  • probes
  • staphylococcus aureus

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