Genetic fingerprinting and relationships of some corynebacterium isolates based on DNA polymorphism

ABSTRACT

Genetic differences and relationships among six Corynebacterium isolates of different geographic origin from Saudi Arabia were studied based on RAPD-PCR polymorphism. In this analysis many random 10-mer primers were screened, but only five primers [A3, A11, B10, B11 and Z6] were able to generate repeatable and informative products among the DNA samples of the studied bacterial isolates. A total of 47 polymorphic bands were generated by the five primers [100% polymorphism]. Of these bands 23 were scored as unique polymorphic bands. The two primers A11 and B10 were found to be the most effective ones in generating unique bands. The former primer generated 8 unique bands in six isolates while the latter primer produced six unique bands in four isolates. In addition, the most pronounced non unique bands categorized the studied isolates into many class patterns. Combination of all data provides a considerable potentiality for discriminating each Corynebacterium isolate by one or more unique bands or a group of combined class patterns. RAPD data were combined together and used to estimate similarity coefficients and to construct a dendrogram that estimates the relationships among the studied Corynebacterium isolates. The similarity coefficient values varied from zero to 0.44% indicating considerable variability within the studied isolates Based on this dendrogram the studied isolates were separated into two main groups. Such clustering in most cases was well correlated to the geographic collection sites