Detection by polymerase chain reaction of all common Mycoplasma in a cell culture facility

The identification of cell cultures contaminated with organisms from the class Mollicutes has led us to examine the effectiveness of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for detecting these organisms in genomic DNA. We developed a previously identified nested PCR primer set and compared its ability to detect Mycoplasma with that of a commercially available PCR kit for detecting Mycoplasma. We found that although the commercial system detected and identified a few of the most common Mycoplasma species, the primer set (GPO-1, GPO-2, MGSO) detected the presence of all the common Mycoplasma species and many of the rare mycoplasma species previously encountered in tissue culture.