Serological Comparison Between Twenty-Five Bovine Ureaplasma (T-Mycoplasma) Strains by Immunofluorescence

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A serological examination, by the indirect immunofluorescence .test, was made of twenty-five bovine Ureaplasma (T-mycoplasma) strains. Two of the 25 strains were apparently identical and did not cross-react with any of the others. None of the other remaining 23 strains were identical but each cross-reacted with at least one other strain, sometimes by one-way reactions. The percentage of similarity of strains was calculated and a similarity matrix was constructed. By this method, the 25 strains were found to fall into three groups. One group contained 11 strains, the second contained 12 strains, whereas the third group contained the two strains that were apparently identical but unrelated to any of the other 23. Certain strains within the two larger groups had a low percentage of similarity to some strains in the other group. Based on these results, a serological method of typing bovine Ureaplasma strahs is proposed, using antisera to eight strains with which all 25 strains react. None of these eight antisera reacted with any of the eight proposed serotypes of Ureaplasma urealyticum . Serology is one of the most important methods of defining species of typical, large colony-forming mycoplasmas and of identifying isolates. Eight serotypes of Ureaplasma urealy- ticurn, the name given to the human urea- plasmas (T-mycoplasmas), have been proposed (12). However, since the guanine and cytosine content of bovine ureaplasmas (7) has been found to be different from that of the human ureaplasmas (2), it was suggested that the bo- vine ureaplasmas may be a different species of the genus Ureaplasrna or a different subspecies of U. urealyticum (7). Based on the results of a comparison of eight bovine ureaplasma strains by three serological tests, it was suggested that although these microorganisms are serologically heterogeneous, groups of similar but not identical strains might exist (6). It also appeared from these results that immunofluorescence would be the most useful of the three techniques used for grouping strains. Since no suitable scheme exists at present for serotyping bovine ureaplasmas, we have com- pared a number of bovine Ureaplasma isolates by immunofluorescence to determine whether a system for the serological identification of these strains could be evolved.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: