3. What do we get from DGGE?The PCR-DGGE technique is widely employed inmicrobial ecology because is capable of providing a of the bacterial community in an environmental sample after a direct DNA extraction (Fig.1). Briefly, an environmental sample (e.g., a food sample) is subjected to DNA extraction obtaining a mixture containing DNA from the bacterial species occurring in the sample. Successively, the DNA mixture is used as template in PCR amplifications of particular variable DNA regions of taxonomic interest by obtaining an amplified product that is a mixture of amplicons from the species present in the initial sample. All the amplicons have the same size but different sequences, and can be thus separated by DGGE. The final result is a fingerprint that is specific of the sample analysed and contains a series of bands relative to the microbial species present in the sample. Identification of the species can be achieved by purifying and sequencing the bands in the DGGE profile. The most commonly employed target for PCR amplification prior to DGGE is the ribosomal DNA. This is because it is a very conserved region of the genome that also includes variable regions. Therefore, primers can be designed by hybridizing to conserved regions but spanning variable regions in order to obtain PCR amplicons with species-specific differences in base pair composition that can be separated by DGGE. Several primer pairs have been employed to amplify variable regions of the 16S rDNA for Bacteria and 26S rDNA or 18S rDNA for Eucarya. In Table 1, primer sets that have been used to study microbial communities from food are described and examples of studies performed on different food products are reported.4. Differentiation of bacterial species isolated from food by PCR-DGGE. Different bacterial species have differences in base pair composition within the variable regions of the 16S rDNA, which makes it possible to distinguish them by PCR-DGGE. In fact, each species is theoretically supposed to yield a different DGGE profile after the amplification of variable regions of the rDNA. Analysis of the amplified variable V3 region of the 16S rDNA was used to differentiate and identify lactic acid bacteria isolated from food (Ercolini et al., 2001a).
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