Prospective Molecular Characterization of Burn Wound Colonization: Novel Tools and Analysis

Each year, 1.2 million people in the United States suffer burn injuries, resulting in 100,000 moderate to severe cases that require hospitalization, where infectious complications is a leading causes of death after the initial resuscitations phase. The current study is focused the temporal burn wound colonization, and how it is associated with patient outcomes. In the past year, we have made significant progress in developing novel molecular approaches for quantitative and qualitative molecular characterization of complex bacterial and fungal communities. Specifically, we have designed and validated a pan-bacterialand a pan-fungal quantitative real-time PCR assay for quantifying microbial burden directly from clinical specimens. We have also designed novel pan-fungal sequencing primers that are under laboratory and in silico validation. In addition, we have developed a high-throughput approach for fungal community sequencing.