RAPD FINGERPRINTING FOR THE DISTINCTION OF PREVOTELLA-INTERMEDIA SENSU-STRICTO FROM PREVOTELLA-NIGRESCENS

A collection of 70 oral strains including reference strains and clinic al isolates identified as Prevotella intermedia sensu late was constit uted to cover a large clinical and geographical diversity. Electrophor esis of the enzyme malate dehydrogenase allowed the identification of the 70 study strains as Prevotella intermedia sensu stricto (n = 36), Prevotella nigrescens (n = 31) and three unclassified strains. By usin g four primers, DNA fingerprints were generated from 20 strains as ran dom amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD). Matching co-migrating amplicon p ositions by pairwise comparison allowed the clustering of the fingerpr ints as two groups coincident with the P. intermedia/P. nigrescens ass ignment by enzyme electrophoresis of malate dehydrogenase. Our data su ggest that isolates identified as P. intermedia sensu late by conventi onal criteria can be speciated as P. intermedia sensu stricto or P. ni grescens by RAPD fingerprinting. (C) 1997 Academic Press.