Visualizing the Invisible

In and on human bodies there is a vast invisible world of trillions of microbes that live with us. The enormous importance of these microbes for our health has only recently been found. The reason for this is simply that it has previously not been possible to study this microbial world.

At inBiome, we developed a straightforward method to accurately characterize this microbial world on all parts of our bodies and we are making major progress in unraveling the connection between our microbial partners and our health.

IS-pro™ at a glance

Profiling technique

IS-pro™ is a bacterial profiling technique which detects bacterial DNA. IS-pro™ can identify bacteria by amplifying small fragments of the bacterial DNA and focusing on specific variations in the length of these fragments, which are specific for that species. The fragments that we amplify come from the 16S-23S interspace, or IS region. IS-pro™ consists of two multiplex PCRs. The first PCR is specific for Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Fusobacteria, Verrucomicrobia and Bacteroidetes, the second PCR is specific for Proteobacteria.

The IS region is amplified with fluorescently labeled phylum specific primers targeting the 16S rDNA  and unlabeled primers targeting the 23S rDNA. The IS-pro™ reaction yields peak profiles that provide two levels of information: the color of fragments sorts species into phyla and fragment lengths can be used to further identify bacteria to the species, subspecies or genus level. A fully automated software pipeline can process the digital data and translate IS-pro™ files into names of bacterial species and their relative abundances.

Bacterial detection using the IS-pro™ technique is significantly quicker than culture and enables to fast-track clinical diagnostics by reducing the turnaround time from sample to reliable results within 5 hours. Identification of bacteria can usually be done up to the species level.

Clinical Microbiome Diagnostics with IS-pro™ detects all bacteria in a sample, whether there is a single species or there are many different bacteria from various taxonomic groups present.

Hands holding laboratory tools