A Simple and Rapid Molecular Typing of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis by Polymerase Chain Reaction

As an attempt to evaluate a molecular tool for fingerprinting clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a PCR-based typing method, so-called 'outward-PCR', was employed in this study. Outward-PCR used in this study was designed to amplify the sequences in-between two IS6110 elements. A total of 81 M. tuberculosis isolates including 73 Korean and 8 Philippine isolates were subjected to PCR amplification and the profiles of the agarose gel electrophoresis were analyzed. In brief, under the PCR conditions used in this study; the 81 clinical isolates were classified into 33 distinctive sub-groups. Among these, 5 sub-groups represented major clusters with 7 to 11 clinical isolates belonging to each sub-group. The banding patterns were clear and reproducible, implying that this rapid and simple PCR-based typing method can be a valuable tool for typing clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis.