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Abstract
The objective was to investigate the genotypic characteristics and distribution of
Staphylococcus aureus in 9 dairy herds of Tabriz and Urmia regions which are located
in east and west Azerbaijan provinces, respectively, Iran. In this study 58 S. aureus
isolates were recovered from 370 milk samples of cows with clinical and subclinical
mastitis. S. aureus isolates were identified on the basis of the cultural and biochemical
properties as well as by amplification of the aroA gene specific to S. aureus and
then were analyzed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment
length polymorphism (RFLP) of the coagulase gene (coa). Amplification of the variable
region of the coa gene from these isolates produced five different PCR products ranging
in size from approximately 490 bp to 850 bp. To obtain RFLP patterns of the PCR products
they were subjected to digestion with restriction endonuclease HaeIII and the fragments
separated by gel electrophoresis. Nine coa gene RFLP patterns, numbered I-IX, were
observed, with 23 isolates (39.66%) assigned to RFLP pattern I and 14 isolates (24.14%)
assigned to RFLP pattern III. Five out of nine patterns were found in both regions
and four of nine patterns were only found in one region. The results demonstrated
that several variants of the coa gene are present in the studied regions, but only
a few of them were predominant, suggesting contagious transmission, a common source,
or host adaptation of subset of the population of S. aureus strains. This study also
indicated that genetic heterogeneity among S. aureus isolates recovered from bovine
mastitis may be exists within and among herds in different regions.