Andreas Nocker

TL;DR: Sample pretreatment with viability dyes has so far been mainly used in combination with PCR (leading to the term viability PCR, v-PCR), and increasingly with isothermal amplification method, but has also successfully been applied to fungi, protozoa and viruses.

TL;DR: PMA-qPCR is a promising technique for limiting detection to intact cells and makes Legionella surveillance data substantially more relevant in comparison with qPCR alone, and confirms the findings with other species that PMA is less membrane-permeant and more selective for the intact cells.

TL;DR: PMA treatment did not substantially affect the sequence profiles of non-heated samples, but heat exposure resulted in a clear difference in the relative proportions of certain groups, significantly more pronounced in heated seawater than in heated canal water.

TL;DR: A detailed study of the effect of amplicon size on amplification signals from unstressed and heat-exposed cells after treatment with propidium monoazide (PMA) is presented and PMA treatment was shown to be more efficient in excluding dead cells from the analysis both in combination with qPCR and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, when longer amplicons were used.

TL;DR: Different conditions to increase the penetration of propidium monoazide (PMA) into dead cells of Salmonella Typhimurium and Listeria monocytogenes as representatives of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria are assessed.