Relationship among acidophilic bacteria from diverse environments as determined by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis (RAPD)

Random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD), a PCR-based technique was applied to evaluate genomic diversity among three strains of Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans, five strains of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans and one acidophilic moderate thermophile strain, using 45 random primers of five different series. More than 2200 bands were observed, with an average of 45 bands per primer. Primer OPC-3 produced the maximum number of fragments whereas minimum numbers of fragments were produced with primer OPA-5. A dendrograrn was generated using cluster analysis by the unweighted pair group method of arithmetic means (UPGMA). The dendrogram showed three groups with similarity ranging from 29 to 85%. The maximum similarity (85%) was observed between the strains T.t(1) and T.t(2) of Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans.