title: Characterization of clinical isolates of Streptococcus agalactiae by random amplified polymorphic DNA using degenerate oligonucleotides.
abstract: Epidemiological studies of Streptococcus agalactiae strains have been limited by the lack of sensitive and discriminatory methods for comparing clinical isolates. Serotyping, albeit a widely used methodology, has been shown to possess low capability to distinguish between epidemiologically related and unrelated isolates. We have employed here a random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) assay, using degenerate oligonucleotides as primers, to characterize S. agalactiae isolates from related or unrelated clinical samples. Epidemiologically-related isolates (mother-infant pairs) showed identical profiles by this methodology. On the contrary, 12 epidemiologically-unrelated isolates (classified into 5 different serotypes) resulted in 11 distinct RAPD patterns. This suggests that the proposed modified RAPD assay provides a highly discriminatory tool for the analysis of genomic diversity among isolates from pathogenic organisms.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Microbiología, Universidad Nacional de Rosario.
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Limansky
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Guardati
authors.forename: E G
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Sutich
authors.forename: I E
authors.initials: IE
authors.lastname: Toresani
authors.forename: I E
authors.initials: IE
authors.lastname: Bogado
authors.forename: G M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Joannas
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Viale
mesh_terms: D017931:DNA Primers; D005260:Female; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D011247:Pregnancy; D019105:Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA Technique; D012703:Serotyping; D013292:Streptococcus agalactiae / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers