300246 UE Practical Course in Molecular Microbiology (2011S)

In this course the students have to classify and to identify unknown bacterial isolates which are subjected to a set of different methods nowadays applied in bacterial systematics. These methods include a) classical approaches such as Gram-staining, tests for Oxidase and Katalase, utilisation of carbon sources and production of acid from sugars; b) chemotaxonomic methods such as analysis of quinones, polar lipids, mycolic acids, cell wall diamino acids and polyamines; c) DNA-based methods including generation of genomic fingerprints after ERIC-, REP- and BOX-PCR, restriction analysis of amplified ribosomal DNA (ARDRA) and comparison of sizes of DNA amplicons obtained after amplification of the 16S-23S interspacers (ITS). Based on the results the bacterial isolates are classified in comparison with data from literature and allocated to genera or species.