RESEARCH ARTICLE


Rapid Identification and Characterization of Francisella by Molecular Biology and Other Techniques



Xin-He Lai1, 2, *, #, Long-Fei Zhao3, #, Xiao-Ming Chen1, 2, 4, Yi Ren1, 5
1 Institute of Inflammation & Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
2 Institute of Translational Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
3 College of Life Sciences, Key Laboratory of Plant-Microbe Interactions of Henan, Shangqiu Normal University, Shangqiu, Henan, 476000, PR China
4 Department of Pediatric Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
5 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Florida State University College of Medicine, Tallahassee, FL, USA


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Creative Commons License
© Lai et al. ; Licensee Bentham Open.

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Institute of Inflammation & Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China; Tel: +86-15626509384; E-mail: laixinhe@yahoo.com
# These authors contributed equally to this work.


Abstract

Francisella tularensis is the causative pathogen of tularemia and a Tier 1 bioterror agent on the CDC list. Considering the fact that some subpopulation of the F. tularensis strains is more virulent, more significantly associated with mortality, and therefore poses more threat to humans, rapid identification and characterization of this subpopulation strains is of invaluable importance. This review summarizes the up-to-date developments of assays for mainly detecting and characterizing F. tularensis and a touch of caveats of some of the assays.

Keywords: Francisella tularensis, molecular characterization, subpopulation typing, virulence.