Abstract
The discriminatory power, speed, and interlaboratory reproducibility of tRNA intergenic length polymorphism analysis (tDNA-PCR) combined with capillary electrophoresis was evaluated for the identification of streptococci. This method was carried out in three different laboratories under highly standardized conditions for 54 strains belonging to 18 different species. It was concluded that interlaboratory reproducibility of tDNA fingerprints produced by means of capillary electrophoresis was sufficiently high to permit the exchange between different laboratories and the construction of common libraries which can be consulted for comparison with fingerprints obtained independently in separate laboratories. In a second step, 17 other species were included in the study and examined in one of the participating laboratories. All Streptococcus species studied, except S. mitis, S. oralis, S. parasanguinis, S. pneumoniae, S. thermophilus, and S. vestibularis, showed distinguishable tDNA fingerprints. A database of well-characterized strains was constructed to enable computer-aided identification of unknown streptococcal isolates.