• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.331-336
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• 2005

The objective of this study was to assess the strain-specificity of a DNA probe, Fu12, for Fusobacterium nucleatum subsp. nucleatum ATCC $25586^T$ (F. nucleatum ATCC $25586^T$), and to develop sets of strain-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers. Strain-specificity was tested against 16 strains of F. nucleatum and 3 strains of distinct Fusobacterium species. Southern blot hybridization revealed that the Fu12 reacted exclusively with the HindIII-digested genomic DNA of F. nucleatum ATCC $25586^T$. The results of PCR revealed that three pairs of PCR primers, based on the nucleotide sequence of Fu12, generated the strain-specific amplicons from F. nucleatum ATCC $25586^T$. These results suggest that the DNA probe Fu12 and the three pairs of PCR primers could be useful in the identification of F. nucleatum ATCC $25586^T$, especially with regard to the determination of the authenticity of the strain.