16S Genomics for Diagnosing Invasive Bacterial Infection

Abstract

Invasive bacterial infections (IBI) are leading causes of global morbidity and mortality. Successful treatment of the patients depends on a rapid and accurate diagnosis. The current golden standard procedure for bacterial identification in clinical context requires bacterial culture and biochemical analysis—a slow, culture-dependent and possible subjective approach, presenting several limitations. Bacteria identification based on 16S rRNA gene represents a faster, culture-independent and objective alternative for diagnostic. Here, we give a general overview of 16S rRNA genomics as diagnosing tool for IBI, briefly presenting and discussing the most significant technical approaches for 16S rRNA-mediated diagnosis.