DISCRIMINATION FROM OTHER THERMOPHILIC CAMPYLOBACTER AND GENOME TYPING AT THE CHROMOSOMAL GENOMIC DNA LEVEL OF CAMPYLOBACTER-LARI

Since the respective undigested and intact chromosomal DNAs from C. coli JCM2529T, from two strains of C. coli, C. jejuni JCM2013 and from two strains of C. jejuni migrated as fragments of around 1,900 kb and the chromosomal DNAs from C. lari JCM2530T and from eleven strains of C. lari migrated as fragments of around 1,640kb, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was clearly demonstrated to be useful for the discrimination of C. lari from two other thermophilic species of Campylobacter (C. coli and C.jejuni). PFGE revealed that SmaI generated nine distinctly different and distinguishable banding profiles from the DNA of 18 strains of C. lari, which included the type strain. Three types of banding profile, namely, A, B and C, exemplified by the nine profiles included those from five, four and three strains of C. lari, respectively. Our present attempt to discriminate and to genome-type C. lari at the chromosomal genomic level using PFGE and SmaI may be a valuable step towards a discriminative and molecular-epidemiologic study of C. lari.