Inter-Specimen Imbalance of Mitochondrial Gene Copy Numbers Predicts Clustering of Isolates in Distinct Subgroups.

The molecular detection of is an important therapy-relevant tool in microbiological diagnostics. However, the quantification of this pathogen in the past has revealed discordant results depending on the target gene. As the clinical variety of infections ranges between life-threatening infections and symptom-free colonization, the question arises if qPCRs are reliable tools for quantitative diagnostics of . positive BALs were quantitatively tested for the copy numbers of one mitochondrial (COX-1) and two nuclear single-copy genes (KEX1 and DHPS) compared to the mitochondrial large subunit (mtLSU) by qPCR. Independent of the overall mtLSU copy number clustered into distinct groups based on the ratio patterns of the respective qPCRs. This study, which compared different mitochondrial to nuclear gene ratio patterns of independent patients, shows that the mtLSU gene represents a highly sensitive qPCR tool for the detection of , but does not display a reliable target for absolute quantification.