Hundredfold productivity of genome analysis by introduction of microtemperature-gradient gel electrophoresis

Genome profiling, which employs temperature-gradient gel electrophoresis (T GGE) for DNA analysis, has recently been developed in identifying species b y genotype. However, the performance of this technology like the general ap plications of TGGE was, though highly informative, limited in its ability d ue to methodological reasons. This study demonstrates that minimization of the gel for TGGE, to around one-tenth of its conventional size (similar to2 cm), can be successfully introduced, resulting in a hundredfold higher per formance (total evaluation of time, cost, and degree of parallel operations ) than that of the conventional. Reproducibility was evaluated from the mea sures of the pattern similarity scores (PaSS) between band patterns (genome profiles) obtained with the conventional TGGE, and that with micro-TGGE (m u TGGE) developed here, after extracting a set of featuring points from gen ome profiles. Size minimization, which leads to the reduction of the amount of samples required (cost-saving), is another great advantage, enhancing t he employment of multicolor fluorescence technology. Since the further deve lopment of microbe-related fields such as epidemiology and microbial ecolog y inevitably require knowledge based on the identification of a great numbe r of species and strains, microbe-related fields will receive the most opti mal benefits from the technological improvements attained here.