Affiliation:
1. Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, The University of British Columbia,1and
2. Laboratory Services, British Columbia Centre for Disease Control Society,2 Vancouver, British Columbia,
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia3
4. National Research Council Canada, Plant Biotechnology Institute, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,5 Canada, and
5. National Centre for Streptococcus, Edmonton, Alberta,4 and
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Data from four recent studies (S. H. Goh et al., J. Clin. Microbiol. 36:2164–2166, 1998; S. H. Goh et al., J. Clin. Microbiol. 34:818–823, 1996; S. H. Goh et al., J. Clin. Microbiol. 35:3116–3121, 1997; A. Y. C. Kwok et al., Int. J. Syst. Bacteriol. 49:1181–1192, 1999) suggest that an approximately 600-bp region of the chaperonin 60 (Cpn60) gene, amplified by PCR with a single pair of degenerate primers, has utility as a potentially universal target for bacterial identification (ID). This Cpn60 gene ID method correctly identified isolates representative of numerous staphylococcal species and
Streptococcus iniae
, a human and animal pathogen. We report herein that this method enabled us to distinguish clearly between 17
Enterococcus
species (
Enterococcus asini
,
Enterococcus rattus
,
Enterococcus dispar
,
Enterococcus gallinarum
,
Enterococcus hirae
,
Enterococcus durans
,
Enterococcus cecorum
,
Enterococcus faecalis
,
Enterococcus mundtii
,
Enterococcus casseliflavus
,
Enterococcus faecium
,
Enterococcus malodoratus
,
Enterococcus raffinosus
,
Enterococcus avium
,
Enterococcus pseudoavium
,
Enterococcus
new sp. strain Facklam, and
Enterococcus saccharolyticus
), and
Vagococcus fluvialis
,
Lactococcus lactis
, and
Lactococcus garvieae
. From 123 blind-tested samples, only two discrepancies were observed between the Facklam and Collins phenotyping method (R. R. Facklam and M. D. Collins, J. Clin. Microbiol. 27:731–734, 1989) and the Cpn60 ID method. In each case, the discrepancies were resolved in favor of the Cpn60 ID method. The species distributions of the 123 blind-tested isolates were
Enterococcus
new sp. strain Facklam (ATCC 700913), 3;
E. asini
, 1;
E. rattus
, 4;
E. dispar
, 2;
E. gallinarum
, 20;
E. hirae
, 9;
E. durans
, 9;
E. faecalis
, 12;
E. mundtii
, 3;
E. casseliflavus
, 8;
E. faecium
, 25;
E. malodoratus
, 3;
E. raffinosus
, 8;
E. avium
, 4;
E. pseudoavium
, 1; an unknown
Enterococcus
clinical isolate, sp. strain R871;
Vagococcus fluvialis
, 4;
Lactococcus garvieae
, 3;
Lactococcus lactis
, 3;
Leuconostoc
sp., 1; and
Pediococcus
sp., 1. The Cpn60 gene ID method, coupled with reverse checkerboard hybridization, is an effective method for the identification of
Enterococcus
and related organisms.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology