Deoxyribonucleic acid relatedness amongst Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus saprophyticus strains

The degree of binding was determined between DNA preparations from 65 staphylococci representing cluster defined in a numerical phenetic survey and 3H-labelled DNA from reference strains of S. epidermidis, S. haemolyticus, S. hominis, S. saprophyticus and S. warneri. The congruence between the DNA pairing and numerical phenetic data was good with S. epidermidis and S. saprophyticus being shown to be genomic species. However, some strains identified as S. epidermidis using recommended diagnostic procedures were found to belong to other taxa, notably S. simulans and S. warneri. The moles percent guanine plus cytosine content of the DNA of the test strains was within the range 27 to 34.