The established Yersinia pestis biovars are characterized by typical patterns of I-CeuI restriction fragment length polymorphism.

作者：Alexander Rakin, Jürgen Heesemann · 发表于：PubMed · 年份：1995 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research、Bacterial Genetics and Biotechnology、Plant-based Medicinal Research

The genomes of three main biovars of Yersinia pestis were subjected to restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis using I-CeuI endonuclease. I-CeuI which is encoded by a mobile intron in Chlamydomonas engamenans recognizes a 25-bp site in the ribosomal RNA rrl gene and cuts DNA of most representatives of Enterobacteriaceae into seven fragments corresponding to the presence of seven rrn-operons. Glycerol-positive Y. pestis strains (biovars antiqua and mediaevalis) contain seven ribosomal operons which can be recognized by I-CeuI endonuclease. However, glycerol-negative strains of Y. pestis biovar orientalis expose only six restriction sites for I-CeuI. The restriction fragment length polymorphism patterns obtained with I-CeuI make it possible to distinguish between three biovars of Y. pestis. Use of another rare cutting restriction enzyme, Bln/I, permits differentiation between pigment-adsorbing and avirulent non-pigment-adsorbing Y. pestis. Still, due to homologous recombination between the two copies of IS 100 insertion sequence bracketing the pgm-locus, the mechanism of deletions in the pgm-locus seems to be confined only to strains of biovars antiqua and mediaevalis, and can be different in Y. pestis strains of biovar orientalis. The I-CeuI restriction patterns of two Yersinia strains isolated within a ten-year period in the port of St. Petersburg and originally identified as Y. pseudotuberculosis 01 turned out to be related to typical representatives of Y. pestis b...