Sistema para Procesar las Imágenes de los Patrones de Bandas de ADN Obtenidos en Electroforesis de Campos Pulsantes

Abstract

Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) is a technique for separating, as band patterns, mixtures of different DNA molecules larger than 20 kilo base pairs. This technique has a wide application in the molecular typing of microorganisms since it allows the complete study of the microbial genome in a single experiment, giving characteristic band patterns of each strain. DNA band patterns analysis is carried out using bioinformatics tools that allow processing electrophoretic images and identifying similarities between the band patterns which constitutes the basis for molecular typing. In our work we intend to provide a computational tool for processing the images obtained from different PFGE experiments, that allows a compact storing of the results in a database and that facilitates the typing of microorganisms through images conversion from BMP or JPEG to vectors with binary attributes.

From this work, it was developed a software (Guefast Image Processor) that extends the capabilities of the Guefast’s trading System (Neuronic SA, Cuba). This software facilitates the processing of gel images of PFGE and includes algorithms to: standardize the images, detect the DNA band patterns; binarize the patterns and identify the similarities between them. The results are stored in a database that contains useful information for determining the similarities between all the analyzed experimental band patterns and those stored in the database from the same genere and species.