Genotyping by ERIC-PCR of <i style="">Escherichia coli</i> isolated from bovine mastitis cases<b style=""></b>

Abstract

Mastitis is an important problem in dairy farms and pathogen<i style=""> Escherichia coli</i> has a world-wide importance. In the present study, authors have shown that <i style="">E. coli</i> strains isolated from bovine mastitis cases could be differentiated using a PCR with enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequences (ERIC) primers. In all, 40 strains of <i style="">E. coli</i> from bovine mastitis cases were subjected for ERIC-PCR. Of these, 37 showed amplicons ranging from 350 to &gt;3000 bp. The PCR profile generated showed polymorphism in 37 strains. An intense amplicon of 1300 bp was seen in all the strains, except <i style="">E. coli</i> O27 (code M10) and O69 (M33). Based on ERIC-PCR profiles, of 37 <i style="">E. coli</i> strains, 22 were found to be distributed among 4 genotypes, whereas each of the remaining 15 strains showed unique genotypic pattern. The study emphasizes the utility of ERIC-PCR in intraserotype differentiation of strains based on their genotype and, thus, it is complimentary to serotyping. Furthermore, it was possible to differentiate strains of the same serotype into different genotypes. PCR amplification with ERIC primers was a fast and reliable method for differentiation and identification of <i style="">E. coli</i> strains. The advantage of this method compared to serotyping is the fact that different genotypes could be found even in strains within the same serotype or in untypable strains