Comparison of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis with random amplified polymorphic DNA for typing of Mycoplasma synoviae.

Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis was developed and compared with random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) method to type 18 Mycoplasma synoviae (MS) strains. All analysed strains were typeable by RAPD but only 89% of MS strains were typeable by PFGE because of DNA degradation. The discriminatory power of RAPD was greater than that of PFGE but the two techniques had a discriminatory index superior to 0.95, the threshold value for interpreting typing results with confidence. The in vitro, in ovo and in vivo reproducibility of both typing techniques was 100%. However, the interpretation of RAPD patterns was complicated because of inconsistent band intensity. Thus, these molecular typing techniques should be helpful for epidemiological studies of avian mycoplasma infections.