“…Regarding the genus Clostridium, there are very few studies on PFGE typing of dairy-related isolates, since the majority of PFGE studies have been focused on pathogenic species such as C. difficile (Alonso et al, 2005), C. botulinum (Hielm, Björkroth, Hyytiä, & Korkeala, 1998a) and C. perfringens (Chalmers et al, 2008). PFGE protocols have been applied to Clostridium isolates from milk (Ingham, Hassler, Tsai, & Ingham, 1998) and cheese (Christiansen et al, 2005), but the genetic diversity among isolates was not discussed and some were untypable by the PFGE method used. On the other hand, Stolle, Sperner, Schalch, and Eisgruber (2001) used a short and a long PFGE protocol for the analysis of isolates belonging to different Clostridium species, among them C. beijerinckii, C. butyricum, C. sporogenes and C. tyrobutyricum.…”