bacteria biodiversity study

Bacteria are ubiquitous. They are often considered as harmful because responsible of serious diseases in human, animal or in crop production.

However their positive and essential roles in making life possible on earth are primordial. Bacteria are associated with other organisms at numerous different levels. These symbiotic associations can be divided into parasitism, mutualism and commensalism.

Just a few examples of “good” bacteria could be the actinomycetes, that produce antibiotics such as streptomycin and nocardicin; hundreds of species of bacteria live symbiotically in the guts of animals (including humans) helping in digestion, or elsewhere in their bodies; each human is a bacteria ecosystem with thousands of species inside and on his body; others are essential on the roots of certain plants, converting nitrogen into a usable form; bacteria are indispensable in the production of numerous food and beverages (yogurt, wine…); bacteria help to break down dead organic matter, and first of all make up the base of the food web in many environment.

The importance of bacteria in an infinite number of life and symbiotic mechanisms is huge, although more and more identified. With the help of genetic and biomolecular techniques, the bacteria world is each day better described and understood. The number of described bacteria species or strains inside a species increases rapidly, along with the knowledge of their positive or negative role and potential.

In a growing number of topics, it becomes necessary to establish a complete list of the bacteria involved to understand or prevent diseases, diverse phenomenon, or contaminations. The bacterial biodiversity description permits then to distinguish the “good” bacteria or strains of bacteria, from the “bad” ones.

For example, in the comprehension if the Noma disease, it was indispensable to describe the oral bacterial biodiversity of healthy and diseased patients to understand the infection. This reasoning can be applied to lots of bacterial disease studies, as well as food-processing and water control for example.

IAI offers to undertake such bacterial biodiversity study at a molecular level. That means that the bacterial identifications are made with DNA as the base of identification. This is very important, because the usual “culture approach” suffers of two main problems. First, not every bacterium grow easily even on specific substrate, and secondly, with bacteria you have to make identification at the sub-species level, to distinguish the different strains. Indeed, in the same species of bacteria, one strain could be virulent, whereas another is not. In a great majority, different strains of a same species do not differ phenotypically, making study base on DNA the only mean to distinguish them.

IAI can then lead molecular bacterial biodiversity study for any topics. If you do need such a work, contact us to discuss about your project. Price depends of the quantity of samples to be studied and the importance of the project.

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