Comparative performance of enterobacterial repetitive intragenic consensuspolymerase chain reaction and lipopolysaccharide electrophoresis for the identification of Bradyrhizobium sp. (Lotus) strains

We compared two methods for typing bacterial strains: electrophoretic lipop olysaccharide profiling and genomic fingerprinting by enterobacterial repet itive intragenic consensus-polymerase chain reaction. Our aim was to assess the relative utility of these techniques for identification of bradyrhizob ia. A collection of Uruguayan Bradyrhizobium strains isolated from Lotus su bbiflorus was selected to test both techniques in terms of their discrimina ting ability and ease of use. Both techniques were found to be equally disc riminating and they classified the samples in the same way, although each m ethod ascribed two strains to different groups. Genomic profiling of some s trains required previous DNA purification, whereas this was found to be unn ecessary for others. Lipopolysaccharide profiling was found to be easier an d cheaper to perform, but was not useful for determination of the genetic r elationship among the strains. (C) 1999 Federation of European Microbiologi cal Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.