ARBITRARILY PRIMED PCR ANALYSIS OF MYCOPLASMA-HYOPNEUMONIAE FIELD ISOLATES DEMONSTRATES GENETIC-HETEROGENEITY

Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae is the primary agent of mycoplasmal pneumonia in swine. In this study we performed an arbitrarily primed PCR (AP-PC R) analysis, in which low-stringency amplification with a single prime r was used, to investigate genetic variability in M. hyopneumoniae str ains and field isolates. We performed preliminary experiments to exami ne the efficacy of 40 different 10-mer oligonucleotides for priming an AP-PCR with M. hyopneumoniae J(T) (T = type strain) chromosomal DNA. On the basis of our results, we selected primers OPA-3, OPA-17, and OP B-10 for use in an analysis performed with 23 field isolates. The most informative results were obtained with primer OPA-3. A total of 21 of 23 clinical isolates produced multiband patterns with this primer, wh ile 2 isolates failed to produce any detectable bands, Our data show t hat M. hyopneumoniae is genetically diverse and that M. hyopneumoniae strains can be divided into at least six epidemiological subgroups on the basis of AP-PCR results.