Evaluation of Random and Repetitive Motif Primed Polymerase Chain Reaction Typing of Helicobacter pylori

Molecular epidemiology of Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis isolated from horses in California

Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis biovar Equi is an important pathogen of horses. It is increasing in frequency in the United States, and is responsible for various clinical forms of infection, including external abscesses, internal abscesses of the abdominal or thoracic cavities, and ulcerative lymphangitis. The host/pathogen factors dictating the form or severity of infection are currently unknown. Our recent investigations have shown that genotyping C. pseudotuberculosis isolates using enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC)-PCR is useful for understanding the evolutionary genetics of the species as well for molecular epidemiology studies. The aims of the present study were to assess (i) the genetic diversity of C. pseudotuberculosis strains isolated from horses in California, United States and (ii) the epidemiologic relationships among isolates. One hundred and seven C. pseudotuberculosis biovar Equi isolates from ninety-five horses, and two C. pseudotuberculosis biovar Ovis strains, C. pseudotuberculosis ATCC 19410^T type strain and C. pseudotuberculosis 1002 vaccine strain, were fingerprinted using the ERIC 1+2-PCR. C. pseudotuberculosis isolated from horses showed a high genetic diversity, clustering in twenty-seven genotypes with a diversity index of 0.91. Minimal spanning tree showed four major clonal complexes with a pattern of temporal clustering. Strains isolated from the same horse showed identical ERIC 1+2-PCR genotype, with the exception of two strains isolated from the same animal that showed distinct genotypes, suggesting a co-infection. We found no strong genetic signals related to clinical form (including internal versus external infections). However, temporal clustering of genotypes was observed.

Molecular methods for typing of Helicobacter pylori and their applications

Microbial typing is a useful tool in clinical epidemiology for defining the source and route of infection, for studying the persistence and reinfection rates, clonal selection in the host and bacterial evolution. Phenotypic methods such as biotyping, serotyping and hemagglutinin typing have little discriminatory power compared to genotypic methods concerning the typing of Helicobacter pylori. Therefore great efforts have been made to establish useful molecular typing methods. In this context, the most frequently used genotypic methods are described based on our own experience and the literature: (1) restriction endonuclease analysis, (2) endonuclease analysis using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, (3) ribotyping, (4) polymerase chain reaction (using either random primers or repetitive DNA sequence primers), and (5) polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of e.g. the urease genes. Furthermore, reproducibility, discriminatory power, ease of performance and interpretation, cost and toxic procedures of each method are assessed. To date no direct comparison of all the molecular typing methods described has been performed in the same study with the same H. pylori strains. However, PCR analysis of the urease gene directly on suspensions of H. pylori or gastric biopsy material seems to be useful for routine use and applicable in specific epidemiological situations.

Suitability of repetitive-DNA-sequence-based PCR fingerprinting for characterizing epidemic isolates of Salmonella enterica serovar Saintpaul

Three molecular typing methods, repetitive-sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) fingerprinting, plasmid profiling, and arbitrarily primed PCR fingerprinting, were used to characterize isolates of Salmonella enterica serovar Saintpaul. Most of the isolates were obtained from epidemic human cases of food-borne salmonellosis, together with some from the food material suspected to be the source of infection, and a few were obtained from other cases apparently not related to the epidemic. All three methods adequately discriminated the epidemic strain from other strains of the serovar. In addition several isolates from human cases which are not identical to the epidemic strain were found. These isolates therefore must have been responsible for some sporadic infections, which were only temporally related to the epidemic. These strains showed a high degree of similarity to a strain isolated from a turkey. rep-PCR fingerprinting with REP-Dt primers and primer ERIC1R, applicable even to crude cell lysates, offers an attractive choice as a primary method for the discrimination of various Salmonella serotypes as well as isolates within serotype Saintpaul.