T-RFLP – a representative tool to study pulmonary microbial communities

Background: It has become apparent that lungs are constantly exposed to complex microbial communities. Changes in such communities may play critical role in the initiation of lung diseases. The aim of this study was to characterize the normal microbiota of lungs and COPD-induced alterations in lower respiratory tract. Methods: Conventional culture-based methods for the analysis of pulmonary flora miss bacteria that are difficult or impossible to culture. Therefore we applied PCR-based tools – terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and sequencing. T-RFLP generates fragments that differ in leng…