STRAIN-SPECIFIC FINGERPRINTS OF RHIZOBIUM-LOTI GENERATED BY PCR WITH ARBITRARY AND REPETITIVE SEQUENCES

Strain-specific genomic patterns of strains of Rhizobium loti were gen erated by PCR using both arbitrary and repetitive sequence primers, In this study we determined that PCR with repetitive sequence CER as wel l as ERIC primers provides an effective means of differentiating among R. loti strains. The patterns of the resulting PCR products were anal yzed on polyacrylamide gels and found to be highly specific for each s train studied. CER-PCR and ERIC-PCR products were more discriminative among 14 R loti isolates than RAPD. In addition, PCR fingerprinting us ing arbitrary and CER primers generated highly specific and reproducib le patterns when parallel reactions with total bacterial DNA and DNA e xtracted from lysed cells were carried out.