The forward

and reverse complements of all molecular tag reference sequences were translated from base space into color space using a custom perl script. We trimmed 20 bases from the 5′ end of each read to remove the adapter. We aligned the sequence reads to each reference molecular tag sequence using a publically available Smith-Waterman local alignment in colorspace with affine gap penalties [27]. We determined an alignment threshold corresponding to an alpha value of 0.05 by aligning 10 million random reads to each reference sequence. For each read, we kept the reference sequence with the highest scoring alignment if its score exceeded the empirically derived threshold. The final read-out was the number of reads corresponding to each molecular probe. Analogously to the processing of the Tag4 data, we employed the data for the six probes for L. delbrueckii as the negative control. The

average number of SOLiD reads and standard deviation selleck kinase inhibitor for the six were calculated. Again, to minimize false positives at this stage of the development of the molecular probe technology, we used the average plus five standard deviations as the cut-off between negative and positive for each molecular probe. Also to minimize the number of Idasanutlin cost false positives at this stage of the development of the molecular probe technology, concordance of the data was required. A majority of the molecular probes for any given microbe must have been positive to score the microbe as present. The same caveats as for the Tag4 data analysis apply. We identified promiscuous molecular

probes for the five simulated LY2228820 price clinical samples. ED116 (G. vaginalis) and ED675 (L. jensenii) were positive for all five simulated clinical samples, when neither DNA was present in any. ED611 (B. longum) and ED121B (G. vaginalis) were positive for four of the five simulated clinical samples. Therefore, the data from these four probes were excluded from the analyses. As only one G. vaginalis probe remained, G. vaginalis was removed from further consideration. That left 187 molecular probes representing 39 bacteria. There were SOLiD data for fourteen clinical samples. Since these were sequenced with the simulated clinical samples, the identical negative control was employed. We identified promiscuous molecular probes Chlormezanone for the clinical samples. We excluded the data for any probe positive for seven (50%) or more samples (except Lactobacillus). That group included sixteen molecular probes: A. baumannii (ED211, 13/14; ED212, 7/14; ED213, 8/14; leaving two probes), B. fragilis (ED141, 12/14; leaving four probes), B. longum (ED611, 13/14; ED614, 12/14; ED619, 7/14; leaving two probes), G. vaginalis (ED116, 13/14; ED119, 10/14; ED121B, 14/14; leaving no probes), L. jensenii (ED675, 14/14; leaving five probes), Staphylococcus aureus (ED236, 12/14; leaving two probes), S. agalactiae (ED263, 12/14; leaving one probe), T.