COMPARISON OF ANTIGENIC AND PATHOGENIC PROPERTIES OF MYCOPLASMA-IOWAESTRAINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF A PCR-BASED DETECTION ASSAY

The six reference strains of Mycoplasma iowae (I, J, K, N, Q and R) an d 12 field strains, most of them isolated from turkeys, were studied w ith a growth-inhibition test and a dot immuno-binding test with rabbit antisera to the different serovars of M iowae, 16S rDNA gene amplific ation by polymerase chain reaction, and pathogenicity for chicken or t urkey embryos. Antigenic tests tended to be strain specific and showed that most field strains were closely related to serovars K or N. The two pairs of primers chosen in 16S rDNA guided the amplification of 33 2 base pairs (bp) or 892 bp fragments from all the M iowae strains tes ted. All the field strains tested were highly pathogenic for turkey em bryos.