Microbial Detection and Imaging Tools

Microbiota is the multi-species community of microorganisms in a specific host habitat or ecosystem. Microbiome refers to the genetic material of all the microbes reside within the human body (bacteria, viruses and fungi). These microbe communities act as an essential organ that has extensive functions such as development of immunity, defense against pathogens, host nutrition, host energy metabolism and synthesis of vitamins. Unraveling host-bacteria interaction and the ability to detect the microbiota is of high significance for promoting the human microbiome research.

Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH) technique can serve as a powerful tool to observe native microbial populations including unculturable bacteria in diverse microbiome environments, for example samples from human origin (e.g. blood and tissue), microbial ecology (e.g solid biofilms and aquatic systems) and plants (e.g root surface and rhizosphere).

Herein we show that our newly developed FISH probes are specific and robust, allowing rapid identification of pathogenic bacteria (such as Proteus species and Porphyromonas gingivalis) in diverse samples including mixed bacterial population. In addition, our microbiome antibodies portfolio is comprised of highly specific anti bacteria and anti bacterial components (e.g. toxins, unique proteins and Lipopolysaccharides) antibodies. These antibodies are suitable to be used in various applications including ELISA, WB, imaging and bacterial isolation.

Together these set of tools will allow both imaging, detection and isolation of specific bacteria which serve as a crucial step in the microbiome research field.