Genes in Your Tissue: Probe Identification and Sequencing Microbial Targets from Formalin-Fixed, Paraffin-Embedded Tissue

Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue is regarded as a valuable source of clinical information. Due to its potential use in biomarker discovery, research initiatives are driving the implementation of best practices in pre-analytical and post-analytical processing. The clinical microbiology laboratory stands to gain from these efforts to integrate standard operating procedures, extraction methods, and quality metrics. As molecular diagnostics broadens its test menu for tissue samples, results derived from tissue will become more reproducible, and microbiological detection methods, in the form of in-situ hybridization, polymerase chain reaction, and nucleic acid sequencing, are likely to become more commonplace. Although limited in number, infectious disease diagnostic options are available for fixed tissue. Thus, it is important for microbiologists to better understand histological practices and the underpinnings of the tissue processing that occurs prior to the time of nucleic acid amplification attempts.