Cervical microbiome of pregnant women

To systematically investigate all kinds of bacteria colonizing the gravid cervix, we have embarked on this culture-independent strategy. We extracted DNA from the cervical swab using an established protocol involving mutanolysin and proteinase K (Yuan et al., PLoS One 2012; 7, e33865). Notably, mutanolysin has lytic activity against some species of Streptococcus and Lactobacillus commonly found in the female reproductive tract. Moreover, this protocol has produced significantly better bacterial community structure representation than other tested methods without mutanolysin. Subsequently, the extracted DNA was subjected to broad-range PCR amplification targeting the 16S rRNA gene, universally possessed by all bacteria but not by human, and massively parallel sequencing.