Development and application of oligonucleotide probes for molecular identification of Xenorhabdus species

Synthetic deoxyoligonucleotide probes that hybridized against the region at positions 455 through 480 of 16S rRNA were developed for the identification of all five Xenorhabdus species. Sequence variation in the respective rRNA region between two strains of Xenorhabdus luminescens in addition allowed the construction of two strain-specific probes. Of 27 isolates determined to be Xenorhabdus strains by phenotypic characterization, 24 could be assigned to four of the five species. Two strains (HL-1 and HL-2) isolated from a Heterorhabditis sp. and a single strain (D-1.1) isolated from Steinernema affinis showed no hybridization signal with any of the five species-specific probes. With regard to the available species descriptions of nematodes, the results presented here confirm that, except for Steinernema affinis, the individual nematode hosts harbor only a single Xenorhabdus species.