Other Microbiology Commons^™

Characterization Of Uncultured, Human Oral Microbiota Using A Targeted, Single-Cell Genomics Approach, Alisha Gail Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations

Microbial communities associated with the human oral cavity are complex, and many oral microbes have yet to be cultured. These uncultured community members are of interest ecologically and phylogenetically, and a number of uncultured species have been positively correlated with oral diseases such as periodontitis. Thus, an approach was adapted to selectively separate single cells from mixed populations of oral bacteria and obtain genomic information for uncultured community members. A combination of fluorescent labeling, cell sorting with flow cytometry and multiple displacement amplification was used to obtain sufficient genomic material for whole-genome pyrosequencing.

The first targets were from uncultured oral …

Detection Of Bacterial Retroelements Using Genomics, Sen Mu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The reverse flow of genetic information can occur when a special DNA polymerase called Reverse Transcriptase (RT) copies the genetic information in an RNA molecule back into a complementary DNA. One type of RT encoding gene found in bacteria is called a retron element. Recent bacterial genome sequencing projects have revealed many examples of retron RT genes. This gene assignment is based on comparison with a few known retron RT proteins. However, RT proteins are highly diverse in their amino acid sequences, and thus the assigned identity of these RT proteins as retrons in genome databases is questionable. One way …