Sa. Shah et Tl. Romick, SUBSPECIES DIFFERENTIATION OF SALMONELLA BY PCR-RFLP OF THE RIBOSOMALOPERON USING UNIVERSAL PRIMERS, Letters in applied microbiology, 25(1), 1997, pp. 54-57
A polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based method was developed to aid id
entification of bacteria to subspecies level. The method used primers
that annealed to highly conserved regions of the bacterial rRNA operon
, which are proposed to be universal for all bacteria. The resulting P
CR products gave unique electrophoretic patterns due to restriction fr
agment length polymorphisms (RFLP) within the rRNA operon, allowing di
fferentiation to the subspecies level. Six serotypes of Salmonella cho
leraesuis are presented to demonstrate the specificity of PCR-RFLP pat
terns for building an identification database. As the database continu
es to accumulate, the method proves to be specific and rapid for ident
ifying bacteria based on stable genetic characteristics.