Epidemiology and Infection

Table of Contents - 1999 - Volume 122, Issue 03  


DNA restriction patterns produced by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis in Moraxella catarrhalis isolated from different geographical areas

G. MARTINEZ a1c1, K. AHMED a1, C. H. ZHENG a1, K. WATANABE a1, K. OISHI a1 and T. NAGATAKE a1
a1 Department of Internal Medicine, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan

Abstract

Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of the genomic DNA of Moraxella catarrhalis was done in 172 strains isolated from sputum of patients with respiratory infections in Nagasaki (130 strains), Europe (14 strains), Thailand (6 strains), Uganda (3 strains), Bangladesh (5 strains) and Kuwait (14 strains). Restriction endonuclease with SmaI generated 4–16 DNA fragments ranging from 1000 kb to 24·25 kb and was classified into 31 major groups. It was found that there were wide variations of DNA restriction patterns of strains isolated from the same and different geographical areas. DNA restriction patterns of strains isolated in Nagasaki during the last 12 years showed dynamic changes of the predominant strains in each time period. We conclude from this study that PFGE is a suitable method to document interstrain variation in M. catarrhalis.

(Accepted February 10 1999)


Correspondence:
c1 Author for correspondence: Department of Internal Medicine, Institute of Tropical Medicine 1-12-4 Sakamoto machi, Nagasaki 852-8102, Japan.

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