An ultra-rapid method for the study of antibiotic resistance plasmids.

A rapid method of isolating plasmid DNA has been developed from that of Birnboim & Doly (1979). This method allows large numbers of strains to be examined, and can be employed to isolate DNA from members of the Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, (including methicillin-resistant strains) and coagulase-negative staphylococci. Plasmids of widely differing sizes are amenable to isolation by this technique, which yields DNA of sufficient purity to allow restriction endonuclease and homoduplex analysis.