Comparison of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and three rep-PCR methods for evaluating the genetic relatedness of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia isolates.

AIMS: In this study, three facile repetitive-sequence PCR (rep-PCR) techniques have been compared with the pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) method for differentiating the genetic relatedness of clinical Stenotrophomonas maltophilia isolates.

METHODS AND

RESULTS

The dendrograms of 20 S. maltophilia isolates were constructed based on the data obtained from PFGE and three PCR-based methods, i.e. enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus-PCR (ERIC-PCR), BOX-PCR and repetitive extragenic palindromic-PCR (REP-PCR). When compared with PFGE, ERIC-PCR displayed a much lower discriminatory power, whereas BOX-PCR and REP-PCR had a comparable discriminatory power for close genetic-related isolates.

CONCLUSION

BOX-PCR and REP-PCR can be convenient and effective methods for evaluating the close genetic relatedness of clinical S. maltophilia isolates.

SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: A rapid method for determining S. maltophilia's close genetic relatedness provides a convenient tool for understanding the epidemiology of S. maltophilia.