Genetic relatedness among salmonella serovars estimated using rapd markers

Four Salmonella serovars i.e. S. Typhimurium, S. Enteritidis, S. Virchow and S. Anatum were characterized by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) assay. A total of 12 random primers were used and ten of these yielded Salmonella serovars specific RAPD profile. The number of bands amplified from different primers ranged from 3 to 13 in the size range of 350 bp to 3700 bp. The average number of bands per primer ranged from 3.9 to 4.6 among different Salmonella serovars. The genetic similarity, measured as band sharing proportion (BS) ranged from 0.31 to 0.76 among the different Salmonella serovars. While S. Virchow showed lower genetic similarity with other Salmonella serovars, maximum genetic similarity was observed between S. Anatum and S. Enteritidis. The genetic distances (−ln BS) ranged from 0.28 to 1.16 and revealed similar trend.