Shoreline Biome Presents: "High-Throughput, Low Cost Microbiome StrainID and Analysis"

Strain level profiling is needed for a complete understanding of how microbial communities influence human health. Microbiome profiling of rRNA gene amplicons is a well-understood method that is rapid and inexpensive, but standard short read 16S rRNA gene methods generally cannot differentiate closely related strains. WGS/shotgun microbiome profiling is a high resolution alternative, but with decreased throughput and increased sequencing costs and analysis burden. In addition, many commercially available kits fail to lyse many difficult gram-positive bacteria such as Firmicutes, require extensive hands on time and can rely on harsh bead beating methods that damage DNA.

Data will be presented demonstrating a novel, non-bead beating lysis method combined with a unique, contiguous ~2500 base pair 16S-23S amplicon containing essential internally transcribed spacer-region sequences that are a rich source of variability crucial for differentiating closely related bacterial strains. When StrainID long amplicons are run on the PacBio Sequel, the combination of robust microbe lysis, comprehensive PCR primer pools, a long amplicon product, and unique long read Athena database, microbiome researchers can now enable clear and precise differentiation of closely related strains within and across a variety of complex microbiome samples using a simple, rapid, cost effective approach.