Differentiation of Lactobacillus Species by Molecular Typing

Abstract

A total of 64 type, reference, clinical, health food, and stock isolates of microaerophilic Lactobacillus species were examined by restriction fragment length polymorphisms. Of particular interest were members of six of the eight species most commonly recovered from the vaginas of healthy premenopausal women, namely,Lactobacillus jensenii, L. casei, L. rhamnosus, L. acidophilus, L. plantarum, and L. fermentum. Six main groupings were identified on the basis of ribotyping. This technique was able to classify fresh isolates to the species level. In the case of the ribotype A grouping forL. rhamnosus, differences between strains were evident by chromosome typing (chromotyping). Many isolates did not possess plasmids. Six L. rhamnosus strains isolated from four different health food products appeared to be identical toL. rhamnosus ATCC 21052. The molecular typing system is useful for identifying and differentiatingLactobacillus isolates. Studies of strains of potential importance to the urogenital flora should include molecular characterization as a means of comparing genetic traits with those of strains whose characteristics associated with colonization and antagonism against pathogens have been defined.

Specific identification and molecular typing analysis of Lactobacillus johnsonii by using PCR-based methods and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis

“…Chromosomal DNA isolation was conducted by the method of Zhong et al [27]. All available Lactobacillus 16S rDNA sequences were retrieved from two databases, EMBL and GenBank, and aligned by using the Clustal W program.…”

Applicability of rep-PCR fingerprinting for identification of Lactobacillus species

“…However, as witnessed within the Lactobacillus acidophilus complex and the Lactobacillus casei complex, a correct classi¢cation and identi¢cation of LAB is di¤cult without the support of genotypic techniques [3^5]. The currently used methods for the study of LAB such as protein pro¢ling [6], 16S rRNA sequencing [7], ribotyping [8], and pulsed-¢eld gel electrophoresis (PFGE) [9] are either too laborious, are limited in their resolving power or require a species-speci¢c methodology. Therefore, a method that is universally suitable for the LAB with a high resolving power both on the species and intraspecies level would be a highly valuable tool.…”

Differentiation ofLactobacillus delbrueckiisubspecies by ribotyping and amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis (ARDRA)

“…The second method applied in this study is well known and has been widely used for molecular differentiation of Lactobacillus species, including Lact. delbrueckii, by many authors (Rodtong and Tannock 1993;Roussel et al 1993 8 ;Stahl et al 1994;Duffner andO'Connell 1995, 1998b;Giraffa et al 1998a 9 ; Miteva et al 1998a;Zhong et al 1998). It should be noted that most of these investigations revealed a high level of strain speci®city, but no reports of subspecies differentiation of this particular species have been published.…”