Development and Characterization of a Synthetic DNA, NUversa, to Be Used As a Standard in Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reactions for Molecular Pneumococcal Serotyping

Overview

Journal FEMS Microbiol Lett

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialty Microbiology

Date 2017 Sep 15

PMID 28903467

Citations 9

Authors

Fuminori Sakai

Griffin Sonaty

David Watson

Keith P Klugman

Jorge E Vidal

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Identification of Streptococcus pneumoniae and its more than 90 serotypes is routinely conducted by culture and Quellung reactions. Quantitative polymerase chain reactions (qPCRs) have been developed for molecular detection, including a pan-pneumococcus lytA assay, and assays targeting 79 serotypes. Reactions require genomic DNA from every target to prepare standards, which can be time consuming. In this study, we have developed a synthetic DNA molecule as a surrogate for genomic DNA and present new single-plex qPCR reactions to increase molecular detection to 94 pneumococcal serotypes. Specificity of these new reactions was confirmed with a limit of detection between 2 and 20 genome equivalents/reaction. A synthetic DNA (NUversa, ∼8.2 kb) was then engineered to contain all available qPCR targets for serotyping and lytA. NUversa was cloned into pUC57-Amp-modified to generate pNUversa (∼10.2 kb). Standards prepared from pNUversa and NUversa were compared against standards made out of genomic DNA. Linearity [NUversa (R2 > 0.982); pNUversa (R2 > 0.991)] and efficiency of qPCR reactions were similar to those utilizing chromosomal DNA (R2 > 0.981). Quantification with plasmid pNUversa was affected, however, whereas quantification with synthetic NUversa was comparable to that of genomic DNA. Therefore, NUversa may be utilized as DNA standard in single-plex assays of the currently known 94 pneumococcal serotypes.

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