Typing by serovar, antibiogram, plasmid content, riboprobing, and isoenzyme typing to determine whether Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates requiring proline, citrulline, and uracil for growth are clonal.

Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates requiring proline, citrulline, and uracil for growth (PCU-) have homogeneous phenotypes; most are plasmid-free, belong to few serovars, and are significantly associated with intermediate levels of susceptibility to penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin, and cefoxitin. Because of their lack of variation by these criteria, molecular typing methods, ribotyping (restriction fragment length polymorphism [RFLP] of rRNA genes), and multilocus enzyme electrophoresis were explored as tools for further distinguishing PCU- isolates. By ribotyping, selected PCU- isolates could be separated into four groups on the basis of the hybridization patterns (RFLPs) of SmaI- and AvaII-digested DNA with probes containing rRNA sequences. Most of the isolates (18 of 23 isolates) belonged to a single RFLP (group I). One isolate each was in groups II and IV, and three isolates were in group III. All isolates except one, isolate NS791, had similar multilocus enzyme electrophoresis patterns. Strain NS791 was unusual in that it contained a variant cryptic plasmid with an insert in the 0.46-kb MspI-HinfI fragment of the 4.2-kb plasmid, it was the only isolate belonging to RFLP group IV, and it differed in its multilocus enzyme electrophoresis pattern, having different mobilities for glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase, phosphoglucose isomerase, 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase, and glutamate dehydrogenase. Serovars of PCU- isolates appeared to be more indicative of strain divergence than RFLP or isoenzyme typing. Multilocus enzyme electrophoresis indicated that PCU- isolates are clonal.