Gut Low Density Array (GULDA), a novel qPCR approach to the study of the intestinal microbial ecosystem

Causal relationships between the vast numbers of bacterial species present in the human intestines contain a lot of potential information on the regulation of the gut in the healthy as well as in diseased states. Based on the hypothesis that the human gut microbiota constitutes a dynamic ecosystem, interesting correlations between the presences of the given species should exist at any time. However, due to technical restrictions, it has not previously been possible to analyze such intrinsic bacterial patterns and correlations rapidly for a sufficiently large number of samples. To this purpose, we developed GULDA; a qPCR low-density array with particular focus on bacteria of relevance to the human gut microbiota. The output is given as arbitrary bacterial quantities, which for large sample numbers allow for further characterization of the gut microbiota by uni- and multivariate statistical methods.