MicrobeWorld

Researchers from Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Germany, have developed a new method for better diagnostic of diarrhea causing bacteria. Iit now possible to characterize and distinguish hundreds of bacteria strains in a short time. The method is based on the existence of short, repetitive DNA segments in the genome of all living species. As in a tandem bike, those segments are lined up on the DNA strand, called “tandem repeats”. They are characteristic for every bacterial strain. To identify a certain strain, the HZI researchers use short DNA fragments, marked with certain dyes. Each dyed DNA fragment recognizes a single tandem repeat, binding at it. As a result, the researchers receive, for example, six red fragments binding a tandem of six repetitions. Then, the researchers analyzed the tandem repeats marked with dyed fragments: Every bacteria strain differs in pattern and size of the measured tandem repeats.