Revolutionary genetic research: New method for analyzing bacteria in Würzburg

Revolutionary genetic research: New method for analyzing bacteria in Würzburg

On May 8, 2025, a research team from the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, together with the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), presented a groundbreaking method for analyzing gene activity in bacterial colonies. This innovation, known as bacterial MATQ-seq, represents an improved form of single-cell transcriptomics focused on deepening the understanding of diversity within bacterial populations, particularly with regard to pathogens. The new method makes it possible to record the mRNA molecules of individual bacterial cells and thus identify active genes, which is of great importance for medical research. Loud uni-wuerzburg.de The process has a remarkable cell retention rate of 95%, which sets it apart from traditional methods where loss rates of up to 70% are common.

The study highlights that the new technique can be used to analyze between 300 and 600 genes per bacterial cell. The entire process of creating these single-bacterial transcriptomes takes about five days and is particularly suitable for smaller samples that include hundreds of cells. However, for larger samples with hundreds of thousands to millions of cells, different protocols are required, but are often subject to higher losses and lower gene coverage.

New research platform in Würzburg

As part of this development, the Center for Microbial Single-Cell RNA-seq (MICROSEQ) will be set up in Würzburg. This platform aims to make technologies and expertise accessible to research groups worldwide. MICROSEQ is part of the Würzburg Single-Cell Center, which also offers transcriptome analyzes of individual eukaryotic cells. The advances in genetic analysis represent both a technological advance and a response to the previous challenges in single-cell RNA sequencing, which are often caused by the smaller cell size of bacteria compared to eukaryotes, as well as the difficulties in cell lysis and the detection of bacterial transcripts.

The importance of this method is not only scientific, but also has practical implications for medical research. It allows a deeper insight into cell activity in normal conditions, in illnesses and in response to medications. Loud nature.com The improvements achieved with this technology are also demonstrated in numerous studies showing the importance of high gene coverage and detection of regulatory small RNAs at the single cell level.

Validation and areas of application

The new MATQ-seq technique shows successful validation on Salmonella under different growth conditions and leads to increased robustness of the protocol and reduced failure rate in reading genetic information. This brings significant improvements in the quality of data important in the study of bacterial phenotypes. Such phenotypic heterogeneities are crucial to understand how bacteria adapt to different environments.

The original publication of the results was in the journal mBio and showed that the method is suitable for experiments with limited starting material. This enables the detailed study of small bacterial cell subpopulations in host niches, which could be important for the development of new therapeutic strategies, as well helmholtz-hiri.de emphasized.