Genotyping of Brucella abortus isolated from cattle in Gyeongbuk province by MLVA

Brucella (B.) abortus is a facultative intracellular pathogen that infects a wide variety of animal species and human. Brucellosis is the zoonosis and an extremely important disease around the world. Although the eight species can be differentiated by conventional phenotypic tests, these species display a high degree of DNA homology in DNA-DNA hybridization assay (>90%). Various methods have been established for genotyping of Brucella species, but most of analytical methods are lack reproducibility and limited capability to differentiate them. The attempt of this study was to evaluate multiple-locus VNTR analysis (MLVA) for use of epidemiological trace-back analysis in bovine brucellosis. Ninety-four B. abortus isolates from Gyeongbuk province during 2006~2010 were analyzed using 16 VNTR locus. High resolution automatic capillary electrophoresis system was used for more throughput, simpleer, faster, and better discriminable than conventional gel electrophoresis. As a result, 13 different genotypes were identified from 94 B. abortus isolates. MLVA could contribute to epidemiological trace-back analysis of bovine brucellosis.