DIFFERENTIATION BY MOLECULAR TYPING OF MYCOBACTERIUM-BOVIS STRAINS CAUSING TUBERCULOSIS IN CATTLE AND GOATS

Forty Mycobacterium bovis isolates from cattle and goats were analyzed by using different repetitive genetic markers. The 23 M. bovis strain s from goats were found to carry six to eight copies of the insertion sequence IS6120. In contrast, most of the bovine isolates contained on ly a single copy of this element. The standardized IS6110 fingerprinti ng by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RnP), described for My cobacterium tuberculosis strains, allowed the differentiation of capri ne strains. Although this method was not useful for typing bovine isol ates, the repetitive elements pTBN12 and DR proved to be suitable for this purpose. A procedure using PCR which amplifies IS6110 in the outw ard direction was found to be as sensitive as RFLP for typing M. bovis strains from goats. The use of PCR and RFLP methods based on the IS61 10 polymorphism would be useful for epidemiological studies of caprine tuberculosis. The results are consistent with different strains of M. bovis being implicated in bovine and caprine tuberculosis.