Identification and Comparison of the Nucleotide Sequence of 16S-23S rRNA Gene Intergenic Small SR(Spacer Region) of Lactobacillus rhamnosus ATCC 53103 with Those of L. casei, L. acidophilus and L. helveticus

Abstract

Reliable PCR based identification of lactobacilli has been described utilizing the sequence of 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer region. Those sequence comparisons showed a high degree of difference in homology among the strains of L. rhamnosus, L. casei, L. acidophilus and L. helveticus whose 16S-23S rRNA intergenic small SR's sizes were 222 bp, 222 bp, 206 bp and 216 bp respectively. The sequence of 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer region of L. rhamnosus ATCC 53103 revealed the close relatedness to those of L. casei strains by the homology ranges from 95.4% to 97.2%. 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer region nucleotide sequence of L. acidophilus showed some distant relatedness with L. rhamnosus ATCC 53103 with the homology ranges from 40.3% to 41.8% and that with L. helveticus was shown to be 30% of homology, which exists at the most distant phylogenetic relatedness. The identification of species and strain of lactobacilli was possible on the basis of these results. The common sequences among the 17 strains were CTAAGGAA located in the initiating position of the DNA and some discrepancies were found between the same strains based on these results.