Introduction

The ability to identify microbes in an unknown sample has important applications for agriculture, food industries, clinical diagnostics, bio-terrorism, and more. Faster, more accurate identification of unknowns will enable more informed decisions about response to contamination or attack.

The Problem

A number of methods are available for identification of naturally-occurring pathogens. These include conventional microbiological methods and more recent "genomic" methods, such as the use of PCR and hybridization probes. The microbiological methods require pure samples, and the current genomic methods can be confused by insertion of commonly-tested "diagnostic" sequences from a range of different organisms.

The Solution

The OpGen® Microbial Identification System (OMIS) can uniquely identify an organism using only the DNA molecules from the sample without isolation or PCR. Since OMIS uses whole-genome information, it is able to detect organisms with genetic modifications.

OMIS works by comparing unknown DNA molecules against OpGen's reference database of whole-genome physical maps. This reference database holds information on known microbes, and new entries can be easily added.

An Example

Given a mixture of E. coli K12 and Francisella tularensis, OMIS correctly identified both organisms. OMIS showed a clear signal for E. coli strain K12, and did not show any false positive for E. coli O157:H7 or E. coli CFT073

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