Fig. 1

Schematic representation of IPCR-based approach to determine the genetic context of MGEs in the human oral metagenome. Saliva samples were collected from healthy individuals, and oral metagenomic DNA was subsequently extracted from each sample. The extracted metagenome was partially digested with HindIII restriction enzyme and self-ligated as circular DNA molecules to use as templates for IPCR. The unknown genetic context (blue open arrows) of each MGE (green arrows) can then be detected by designing DNA primers (red arrows) to amplify outwards from the MGE. The IPCR amplicons are cloned into the vector, sequenced, and analyzed by bioinformatics