title: Differentiation of strains from the Bacillus cereus group by RFLP-PFGE genomic fingerprinting.
abstract: Bacillus mycoides, Bacillus pseudomycoides, Bacillus weihenstephanensis, Bacillus anthracis, Bacillus thuringiensis, and Bacillus cereus belong to the B. cereus group. The last three species are characterized by different phenotype features and pathogenicity spectrum, but it has been shown that these species are genetically closely related. The macrorestriction analysis of the genomic DNA with the NotI enzyme was used to generate polymorphism of restriction profiles for 39 food-borne isolates (B. cereus, B. mycoides) and seven reference strains (B. mycoides, B. thuringiensis, B. weihenstephanensis, and B. cereus). The PFGE method was applied to differentiate the examined strains of the B. cereus group. On the basis of the unweighted pair group method with the arithmetic mean method and Dice coefficient, the strains were divided into five clusters (types A-E), and the most numerous group was group A (25 strains). A total of 21 distinct pulsotypes were observed. The RFLP-PFGE analysis was successfully used for the differentiation and characterization of B. cereus and B. mycoides strains isolated from different food products.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Fermentation Technology and Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Sciences, Lodz University of Technology, Lodz, Poland.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Otlewska
authors.forename: Elzbieta
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Oltuszak-Walczak
authors.forename: Piotr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Walczak
mesh_terms: D001407:Bacillus / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D001409:Bacillus cereus / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D004586:Electrophoresis; D005516:Food Microbiology; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods*; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial
keywords: Bacillus cereus group; Cluster analysis; RFLP-PFGE; UPGMA