Identification and classification of Neisseria gonorrhoeae by RAPD fingerprinting

Using the RAPD method, we identified and classified Neisseria gonorrhoeae on the basis of the DNA level. Except OPG20 the other 19 primers of OPG arbitrary primer kit showed informative arrays of amplified prominent segments. Most of the segments were common to all three Neisseria gonorrhoeae groups; some segments were amplified from two groups or only one group so that the fingerprint maps of different Neisseria gonorrhoeae groups were distinctive. Based on these findings, i.e. on the genomic level, we can classify the three Neisseria gonorrhoeae groups. Using OPG10 and OPG11 to amplify the five Neisseria species, we found marked diversity among them, which made it easy for us to identify Neisseria gonorrhoeae from four other Neisseria species. The use of the RAPD method needs some special reaction conditions, e.g. annealing temperature that should not be too low or too high and should be consistently stable. The quality of Taq polymerase is also very important. The reproducibility of the results under these conditions was very good.