Better primer design for metagenomics applications by increasing taxonomic distinguishability

Melita Jaric, Jonathan Segal, Eugenia Silva-Herzog, Lisa Schneper, Kalai Mathee, Giri Narasimhan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Current methods of understanding microbiome composition and structure rely on accurately estimating the number of distinct species and their relative abundance. Most of these methods require an efficient PCR whose forward and reverse primers bind well to the same, large number of identifiable species, and produce amplicons that are unique. It is therefore not surprising that currently used universal primers designed many years ago are not as efficient and fail to bind to recently cataloged species. We propose an automated general method of designing PCR primer pairs that abide by primer design rules and uses current sequence database as input. Since the method is automated, primers can be designed for targeted microbial species or updated as species are added or deleted from the database. In silico experiments and laboratory experiments confirm the efficacy of the newly designed primers for metagenomics applications.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numberS4
JournalBMC Proceedings
Volume7
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 20 2013

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

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