Examination of the molecular diversity of Klebsiella pneumoniae and Mycobacterium avium subspecies Paratuberculosis: two pathogens associated with the dairy industry in Newfoundland

Abstract

Klebsiella pneumoniae and Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (Map) are two important pathogens of cattle causing clinical mastitis (CM) and Johne‘s disease (JD), respectively. Information regarding the molecular diversity of these two pathogens is lacking from Newfoundland. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of different molecular techniques for bacterial species identification and strain discrimination, within and between dairy farms from Newfoundland. For CM, results demonstrate that molecular approaches were able to detect K. variicola and Enterobacter cloacae, which were misidentified as K. pneumoniae by standard biochemical/phenotypic tests. In the case of Map, fragment analysis of 4 short sequence repeats (SSRs) enhanced the capability to accurately differentiate between apparently identical isolates. Polyclonal infection patterns were observed for K. pneumoniae and Map in the current study. Therefore, the molecular identification of bacteria, along with precise genotyping analysis using contemporary and improved methods will be useful in future epidemiological studies.