Abstract

CREDIBILITY OF ITS PRIMERS IN IDENTIFICATION OF LACTOBACILLUS SPECIES OF IRAQI VAGINAL MICROBIOME

Zahra M. Al-Khafaji *, Khairiyiah J. Al-Khataua, Maarib N. Rasheed,Abdulameer M. Ghreeb

ABSTRACT

Balanced vaginal microbiome is quite important to keep health of this biosystem , so precise identification of Lactobacillus spp which is the predominant of healthy vagina to level of species and strains is important to introduction of probiotic treatment . Molecular identification is the more reliable method for that in case of choosing the suitable primers . Forward primers from ITS region of rRNA genes and reverse primer from flanking 23S rRNA gene were found to be suitable for intestinal lactobacillus species and strains identification , which had been adopted to identify vaginal lactobacilli . Results of this study showed that these primers are not quite efficient for identification . It was suggested that other regions could be used for primer selection , in addition to choosing unique marker after performing phenotypic and biochemical characterization to give a chance for environmental impact to get accurate strain identification which is a prerequisite for probiotic treatment .

Keywords: ITS region , 16S-23S rRNA , Vaginal microbiome , Probiotics , Multiplex PCR , Iraq .