16S compositional sequencing also facilitated the identification of inhabitants not previously associated with this complex community. Additionally culture-dependent approaches confirmed the dominance of lacticin 3147-producing lactococci in kefir milk. As the kefir community is a true example of symbiosis, a comprehensive

‘snapshot’ of the bacterial composition, such as that obtained by pyrosequencing-based technology, may begin to aid in the identification and elucidation of the complex interactions associated with this community. The authors would like to thank Fiona Fouhy for her technical assistance. This work was supported by the Science Foundation of Ireland funded Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology, the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC). “
“In this study, two highly specific quantitative PCR assays targeting the bacterial genera Burkholderia and Pseudomonas were developed PTC124 and evaluated on soil samples. The primers were targeting different multivariate regions of the 16S rRNA gene and designed to be compatible with quantitative PCR and the high throughput 454 pyrosequencing technique. The developed selleck products assays were validated using the standard methods. All tests with the new developed assays showed very high specificity. Pyrosequencing was used for direct analysis of the PCR product and applied as a specificity

measurement of the primers. The Pseudomonas primers showed a 99% primer specificity, which covered 200 different Pseudomonas sequence clusters in 0.5 g of soil. In contrast to that the same approach using the genus-specific Burkholderia primers showed only 8% primer specificity. This discrepancy in primer specificity between the normal procedures compared with pyrosequencing illustrates that the common validation procedures for quantitative PCR primers may be misleading. Our results exemplify the fact that current 16S RNA gene sequence databases might lack resolution within many taxonomic groups and emphasize the necessity for a standardized and functional primer validation protocol. A possible solution to this could be to supplement

the normal verification of quantitative PCR assays Urease with a pyrosequencing approach. The number of species and the diversity of the microbial community in ecosystems are immense (Torsvik et al., 1990; Gans et al., 2005; Singh et al., 2009). In recent years, a tremendous effort has been put into identification of the earth’s microbiome (Vogel et al., 2009; Editorial, 2011). In soil, the vast majority of bacteria are nonculturable, and the knowledge of bacterial community organization and its importance for ecosystem function is poorly understood (Singh et al., 2009). It is of fundamental importance to identify the bacterial community for a better understanding of nutrient cycling and energy flow in the ecosystem (Saleh-Lakha et al., 2005; van der Heijden et al., 2008).