16S rRNA and 16S to 23S Internal Transcribed Spacer Sequence Analyses Reveal Inter- and Intraspecific Bifidobacterium Phylogeny

作者：Nathalie Leblond‐Bourget, H. PHILIPPE, Iréne Mangin, Bernard Decaris · 发表于：International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology · 年份：1996 · DOI：10.1099/00207713-46-1-102 · 被引用次数：206 · 研究领域：Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies、Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology、Legume Nitrogen Fixing Symbiosis

In the last few years many attempts have been made to differentiate more than 20 Bifidobacterium species. It has been recognized that identification of bifidobacterial species is problematic because of phenetic and genetic heterogeneities. In order to contribute to our understanding of Bifidobacterium taxonomy, we studied Bifidobacterium phylogeny by performing both 16S rRNA and 16S to 23S (16S-23S) internally transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence analyses. In this study, we determined 16S rRNA sequences of five Bifidobacterium strains representing four species, and compared them with the sequences available in the GenBank database, and used them to construct a distance tree and for a bootstrap analysis. Moreover, we determined the ITS sequences of 29 bifidobacterial strains representing 18 species and compared these sequences with each other. We constructed a phylogenetic tree based on these sequence data and compared this tree with the tree based on 16S rRNA sequence data. We found that the two trees were similar topologically, suggesting that the two types of molecules provided the same kind of phylogenetic information. However, while 16S rRNA sequences are a good tool to infer interspecific links, the 16S-23S rDNA spacer data allowed us to determine intraspecific relationships. Each of the strains was characterized by its own ITS sequence; hence, 16S-23S rRNA sequences are a good tool for strain identification. Moreover, a comparison of the ITS sequences allowed us to estimat...