Programme Hospitalier Recherche Clinique, Institut Pasteur, Inserm, French Public Health Agency.

A collection of 54 unrelated Streptococcus agalactiae strains isolated from cerebrospinal fluid samples from neonates and 60 unrelated strains isolated from carriers that had been previously studied by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis () were characterized by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) assay. Four primers, 5AGGGGGTTCC3, 5AACGCGCAAC3, 5GCATCAATCT3, and 5AGTCGGGTGG3, named OPS16, AP42, A4, and OPS11, respectively, were selected from 29 primers tested. This investigation identified 71 RAPD types. The three families of strains defined by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis analysis, which contain most of the cerebrospinal fluid isolates, were also identified by clustering analysis of RAPD data. Each of these three groups exhibits specific RAPD patterns or fragments. The discriminatory power of the RAPD typing method was also evaluated. The simplest typing scheme was obtained by the combination of RAPD typing done with primers AP42 and OPS11 and serotyping (index of discrimination, 0.97).

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