title: The use of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis for genotyping of Clostridium difficile.
abstract: Genotyping approaches are important for tracking infectious agents and can be used for various purposes. Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE) is among the highly discriminatory genotyping approaches commonly used for characterizing Clostridium difficile. Other genotyping methods used for C. difficile include Ribotyping, Restriction Endonuclease Assay (REA), Multilocus Variable Number Tandem Repeats (VNTR) Assay, and others. PFGE has a high discriminatory power, high reproducibility, and typeability. We utilized PFGE for typing C. difficile isolates of porcine and human origin. We used a macrorestriction fragment analysis of an intact genomic DNA using SmaI, a rare cutting restriction endonuclease. Using a Contour-Clamped Homogeneous Electric Field (CHEF) system with running conditions of 120° angle; initial switch time of 5 s; final switch time of 40 s with a run time of 18 h in a low-melting temperature agarose (Seakem Gold); and 0.5× TBE circulated in the CHEF system at 6 V/cm [CDC (2014) Pulsenet. http://www.cdc.gov/pulsenet/index.html . Accessed 22 Aug 2014] supported by 14 °C cooling module, we were able to separate very large DNA fragments (up to 2 Mb).
authors: Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Infectious Diseases Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA, Gebreyes.1@osu.edu.
authors: Wondwossen A
authors: WA
authors: Gebreyes
authors: Pamela R F
authors: PR
authors: Adkins
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques; D016360:Clostridioides difficile / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting / Q000379:methods; D016521:Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field / Q000379:methods*; D004761:Enterocolitis, Pseudomembranous / Q000235:genetics / Q000382:microbiology*; D006801:Humans; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology; D000091402:Prohibitins; D013552:Swine