298-301Mastitis is an important problem in dairy farms and pathogen Escherichia coli has a world-wide
importance. In the present study, authors have shown that E. coli 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 E. coli from bovine mastitis cases were subjected for ERIC-PCR. Of
these, 37 showed amplicons ranging from 350 to >3000 bp. The PCR profile
generated showed polymorphism in 37 strains. An intense amplicon of 1300 bp was
seen in all the strains, except E. coli
O27 (code M10) and O69 (M33). Based on ERIC-PCR profiles, of 37 E. coli 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 E. coli 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 strain