Who lives in our dishwasher? Preliminar results of fungal metagenomic analysis of household dishwashers

Abstract

In the last few years the advances in molecular biological methods, especially the development of next generation sequencing, have drastically changed and improved our view of microbial world. Progress in new molecular techniques enables us to overcome potential disadvantages of traditional microbiological techniques in fungal community identifications. It also enables us to evaluate the richness of fungal populations more efficiently and reliably. In the present study, we used the Ion Torrent PGM next generation sequencing platform to analyse fungi present in ordinary household dishwashers. The identification was based on massive parallel sequencing of the D2 LSU rRNA amplicon. The analysis revealed rich and diverse fungal communities present in our dishwashers. Interpretation of the results was based on previously published research by Zalar et al. (2011). The results of our study confirmed that the new technology in many ways surpasses classical methods used in fungal analysis by offering quicker, reliable, more sensitive and inexpensive high-throughput identification of microorganisms in entire communities.

Keywords

• molecular biology
• molecular techniques
• fungi
• metagenomics
• next generation sequencing
• Ion Torrent PGM