Molecular Detection of Bartonella spp. in China and St. Kitts

Figure 1

Alignment of oligonucleotides for the pan-Bartonella FRET-qPCR based on the 16S rRNA used in this study. Primers and probes are shown at the top of the boxes. Dots indicate nucleotides identical to primers and probes, and dashes denote absence of the nucleotide. The upstream primers and two probes are used as the indicated sequences, while the downstream primer is used as the antisense oligonucleotide. The designed oligonucleotides show minimum mismatching with Bartonella spp. (0 mismatches with 14 species, 1 mismatch with 3 species, 2 mismatches with 1 species, and 4 mismatches with 2 species) but 11–29 nucleotide mismatches with the related non-Bartonella species. The 6-FAM label is directly attached to the 3-terminal nucleotide of the fluorescein probe, and the LCRed-640 fluorescein label is added via a linker to the 5′ end of the LCRed-640 probe.