Liquid array diagnostics: A novel method for rapid detection of microbial communities in single-tube multiplex reactions

Abstract

We present a novel liquid array diagnostics (LAD) method, which enables rapid and inexpensive detection of microbial markers in a single-tube multiplex reaction. We evaluated LAD both on pure cultures, and on infant gut microbiota for a 15-plex reaction. LAD showed more than 80% accuracy of classification and a detection limit lower than 2% of the Illumina reads per sample. The results on the clinical dataset showed that there was a rapid decrease of staphylococci from 10-day- to 4-month-old children, a peak of bifidobacteria at 4 months, and a peak of Bacteroides in 2-year-old children, which is in accordance with findings described in the literature. Being able to detect up to 50 biomarkers, LAD is a suitable method for assays where high throughput is essential.