Fig. 2

Identification of bacterial pathogen using the melting temperature mapping method. Nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of DNA extracted following needle-biopsy sampling of the vertebral disk, using seven universal bacterial primer sets. The melting temperatures (a) of the seven bacterial primer sets (Bac1–7) were mapped on dimension leads (b). The unique shape of this map matches that of Parvimonas micra filed in the online database. The difference between the values for the sample and P. micra is 0.29; therefore, the sample is highly likely to contain P. micra (c) [10]