The cytochrome cd1-containing nitrite reductase, nirS, plays an important role in biological denitrification. Investigating the presence and abundance of nirS is a commonly used approach to understand the distribution and potential activity of denitrifying bacteria, in addition to denitrifier communities. Herein, a new molecular biology technique termed loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) was developed to rapidly detect nirS gene using those of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to optimize the assay. The LAMP assay relied on a set of four primers that were designed to recognize six target sequence sites, resulting in high target specificity. The specificity of the assay was confirmed by the lack of amplification when using DNA from 15 other bacterial species lacking nirS gene. The limit of detection for the LAMP assay under optimized conditions was 1.87 pg/reaction of genomic DNA, which was an order of magnitude lower than that required by conventional PCR assays. Moreover, a cell-template based LAMP assay was also developed for detecting nirS gene that directly used bacterial cells as template rather than genomic DNA. Only 1 h was needed from the addition of bacterial cells to the reaction to the verification of amplification success, and bulky and sophisticated equipment were not needed. Further, the nirS gene of P. aeruginosa in spiked seawater samples could be detected with both the DNA-template based LAMP assay and the cell-template based LAMP assay, thereby demonstrating the practicality of in-field use of them. In summary, the LAMP assays described here represent a rapid, user-friendly and cost-effective alternative to conventional PCR.

Rapid detection of cytochrome cd1-containing nitrite reductase encoding gene nirS with loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay