TYPING OF MUTANS STREPTOCOCCI BY ARBITRARILY PRIMED POLYMERASE CHAIN-REACTION

The discriminative power of the arbitrarily primed polymerase chain re action (AP-PCR) in differentiating between Streptococcus mutans and St rep. sobrinus species, serotypes and clones was investigated. Mutans s treptococcal isolates (127) obtained from 65 individuals (1-10 isolate s per individual) were AP-PCR typed separately with two random primers , OPA-05 and OPA-13. Bacterial cell lysates were used as a template in PCR reactions, which made AP-PCR easy and fast to perform. Eighty-one isolates from 19 individuals were also ribotyped to compare the discr iminative ability of ribotyping and AP-PCR techniques. AP-PCR performe d with the two primers differentiated between Strep. mutans and Strep. sobrinus isolates, but neither primer detected serotype-specific ampl ification products. OPA-05 distinguished two main AP-PCR patterns amon g Strep. mutans isolates and one main pattern among Strep. sobrinus is olates, whereas OPA-13 found one main AP-PCR pattern among Strep. muta ns isolates and two main patterns among Strep, sobrinus isolates. Ribo typing and AP-PCR revealed 40 and 33 different types among 81 selected isolates, respectively. Both techniques detected intra-individual het erogeneity in 16 out of 19 participants. The results indicate that AP- PCR has good discriminative ability in differentiating between mutans streptococcal clones and that the technique is suitable for epidemiolo gical studies on mutans streptococci. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Scie nce Ltd.