Hajjo Haitham, Bhardwaj Neerupma, Gefen Tal, Geva-Zatorsky Naama
Department of Cell Biology and Cancer Science, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Rappaport Technion Integrated Cancer Center (RTICC), Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Department of Immunology, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Front Microbiol. 2021 Oct 27;12:750624. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.750624. eCollection 2021.
Gut bacteria were shown to exert pivotal effects on health and disease. However, mechanistic studies of gut bacterial communities are limited due to the lack of technologies for real-time studies on live bacteria. Here, we developed COMBInatorial cliCK-chemistry (COMBICK) labeling on human gut-derived bacteria, both aerobic and anaerobic strains, to enable dynamic tracing of live, heterogeneous bacterial communities on the strain level, including clinical isolates of the family. We further show that COMBICK labeling is applicable on anaerobic bacterial strains directly isolated from stool. In COMBICK, the number of labeled bacteria that can be simultaneously differentiated increases exponentially depending on the availability of fluorophores and machine capabilities. This method allows real-time studies of bacterial communities from a variety of ecosystems, and can significantly advance mechanistic research in the microbiome field.
