Description

Previously, culture-dependent methods were used to detect bacterial or fungal infection, but the sensitivity was low, since not all species grew well in culture. Recently, molecular methods based on PCR amplification of the bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene or the fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) followed by capillary sequencing has been used to identify bacteria and fungi. However, the resolution of such capillary sequencing-based method (<100 sequencing reads/sample) is too low to capture the major collection of microorganisms in a sample. Less abundant but possibly pathogenic microorganisms associated with short cervical length remain undetectable. To address the current gap in this field, we propose to more comprehensively survey microbial communities in the cervix of pregnant women by PCR amplification of the 16S rRNA region, ITS or other genomic regions with taxonomic classification potential. This will be followed by next-generation sequencing (>40,000 sequencing reads/sample), which has been proven to capture the majority of microorganisms in a sample.