Sd. Mansfield et al., CHARACTERIZATION AND CLONING OF A 37.6-KB PLASMID CARRIED BY LEGIONELLA-PNEUMOPHILA RECOVERED FROM PATIENTS AND HOSPITAL WATER OVER A 12-YEAR PERIOD, Canadian journal of microbiology, 43(2), 1997, pp. 193-197
For 12 years, strains of Legionella pneumophila serogroup 1 harbouring
a 37.6-kb (23 MDa) plasmid have predominated among patient and potabl
e water isolates at the Victoria General Hospital, Halifax, N.S. Plasm
id DNA recovered from 24 strains isolated between 1983 and 1995 was di
gested with the restriction endonucleases EcoRI, HindIII, KpnI, PvuII,
XbaI, and BamHI. The distribution of cutting sites indicated that the
23-MDa size group had remained essentially unchanged during this peri
od, suggesting the persistence of a single plasmid type. Further fragm
entation pattern analysis permitted the construction of a physical map
of the prototype 23-MDA plasmid, pLp4269. Double digestion with BamHI
-HindIII enabled the cloning of 94.4% of pLp4269 into pBluescript vect
or. A 2.1-kb fragment was not clonable. Plasmid pLp4269 is the first o
f the smaller Legionella extrachromosomal DNAs to be characterized in
this way.