• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2002

Listeria monocytogenes poses an increasing health risk, which in part is due to increasing health risk, consumption of ready-to-eat food products and the introduction of increasing numbers of food products from regions with different dietary habits. L. monocytogenes can be present in meat, shellfish, vegetables, unpasteurised milk and soft cheese and poses a risk if food containing these products is stored at refrigeration temperature and is not properly heated before consumption, as L. monocytogenes is psychrophilic. Amplified-fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis is the method of genotypic techinique in which adaptor oligonucleotides are ligated to restriction enzyme fragments and then used as target sites for primers in a PCR amplification. The amplified fragments are electrophoretically separated to give strain-specific band profiles. Single-enzyme approach that did not require costly equipment or reagents for the fingerprinting of strains of Listeria monocytogenes was developed. Single-enzyme amplified fragment length polymorphism (SE-AFLP) analysis was used to perform species and strain identification of Salmonella, Shigella, Yersinia and E. coli. By careful selection of AFLP primers, it was possible to obtain reproducible and sensitive identification to strain level. The AFLP patterns of L. monocytogenes are divided by the kinds of specimens in which were isolated. SE-AFLP fragments can be analyzed using standard gel electrophoresis, and can be easily scored by visual inspection, due to the low complexity of the fingerprint obtained by this method. These features make SE-AFLP suitable for use in either field or laboratory applications.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.39-46
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• 2002

Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) is a recently developed PCR-based high resolution fingerprinting method that is able to generate complex banding patterns which can be used to delineate intraspecific genetic relationships among bacteria. In this study, we have modified and evaluated a PCR-based technique, amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis, for use in fingerprinting strains of Staphylococcus aureus. Single-enzyme amplified fragment length polymorphism (SE-AFLP) analysis was used to perform strain identification of Staphylococus aureus. By careful selection of AFLP primers, it was possible to obtain reproducible and sensitive identification to strain level. AFLP fingerprinting of 5 reference strains of Staphylococcus aureus and 65 strains of Staphylococcus aureus that were isolated from food sources of different area and diverse genomic types of Staphylococcus aureus were recognized. As a result of this study, we found that the AFLP patterns of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from Seoul, Taejeon and Gwang-Ju indicated the close relation with genetic similarity. The main purpose of this study was to find an alternative and reliable fingerprinting method to study the overall genetic diversity, using Staphylococcus aureus species as an example, and observed if the method can be successfully applied to all staphylococcal species.