Culture and Molecular Profiling of the Respiratory Tract Microbiota

Microbiome research of host-associated communities has been advanced recently through improvements in sequencing technologies and bioinformatic methods. Traditional microbiological culture, when combined with molecular techniques, can provide a sensitive platform to comprehensively study the airway microbiota. Here we describe the culture methods necessary to capture a large proportion of the airway microbiota and molecular methods for profiling bacterial communities through the 16S rRNA gene, which, when combined, offer a more complete picture of the diversity of airway microbial communities than either method alone.