Molecular Diagnosis of Enteric Bacterial Pathogens

Abstract

Bacterial strains belonging to family Enterobacteriaceae are well-established enteric pathogens of humans and animals which are the major cause of mortality worldwide. So to deal with these infections, it is necessary to identify the disease-causing pathogens along with their virulence mechanism. The characterization and detection of these pathogens rely on conventional culturing and biochemical techniques. But these conventional techniques are low sensitive and time intense. This led to search for more rapid, sensitive, and advanced technique for their detection. In the present scenario, the molecular methods are most commonly applied to identify the pathogenic bacterial strains. The molecular methods include DNA-based methods, such as restriction endonuclease analysis of genomic and plasmid DNA, plasmid profiling, chromosomal DNA profiling using pulsed field gel electrophoresis, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods, 16S rRNA sequencing methods, polyphasic taxonomic approaches, etc. These are the more rapid and more sensitive techniques which overcome the issues of identification by conventional techniques. Hence, these techniques are considered the most promising for bacterial identification.