The identity and clonal differences within bacterial populations have been broadly explored through PCR-based techniques. Thus, bacterial identification and elucidation of DNA fingerprinting have provided insights regarding their phenotypic and genotypic variations. Indeed, some diversity of rates may reflect changes among subpopulations that have their own ecological dynamic and individual traits on coexisting genotypes. Therefore, identification of polymorphic regions from nucleic acid sequences is based on the identification of both conserved and variable regions. Advantages of PCR-based methods are high sensitivity, specificity, speed, cost-effectiveness, and the opportunity for simultaneous detection of many microbial agents or variants. Fingerprint information might allow the tracking of certain outbreaks globally in several reference databases containing valuable genotyping information. In this chapter, we will review applications from Web resources and computational tools online for the designing of PCR-based methods to identify bacterial species. We will also focus on lab applications and key conditions for technique standardization.
Part of the book: Biotechnology and Bioengineering