METHODS FOR IDENTIFYING MICROBES IN A CLINICAL AND NON-CLINICAL SETTING

The present invention relates to a method for identifying a microorganism in a biological sample by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), comprising the steps of a) providing a biological sample suspected of comprising microbes, and optionally isolating nucleic acid sequences from said biological sample; b) PCR amplifying at least one microbial rRNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region comprised in said optionally isolated nucleic acid sequences using a set of broad-taxonomic range amplification primers to thereby generate PCR amplicons from nucleic acid sequences of microbial origin; c) recording a high resolution melting curve for the PCR amplicons, and recording the length of the PCR amplicons; d) comparing the high resolution melting curve with a database comprising high resolution melting curves of reference amplicons of known microbial species or strains, to thereby obtain a first identity indicator; e) comparing the length of each PCR amplicon having a distinct length with a database comprising PCR amplicon lengths of reference amplicons of known microbial species or strains, to thereby obtain a second identity indicator; and f) identifying the microorganism present in said sample to the species or strain level if the first and second identity indicator match.