Riffard S, Vandenesch F, Reyrolle M, Etienne J
UPRES EA1655, Faculté de Médecine René Laennec, Lyon, France.
Epidemiol Infect. 1996 Dec;117(3):501-6. doi: 10.1017/s0950268800059173.
The macrophage infectivity potentiator gene (mip) from Legionella pneumophila is a major virulence factor of the species. Thus, mip-detection by amplification has been proposed to assess the presence of L. pneumophila in clinical and environmental samples. The distribution of mip-related sequences within the Legionellaceae was studied by DNA amplification using mip-specific primers followed by Southern blot hybridization with an internal probe. Thirty-nine species (48 serogroups) of Legionellaceae were screened in this attempt. Using this approach, sequences related to mip were observed in 89% of the tested species including the most recently described L. fairfieldensis, L. lansingensis and L. shakespearei. In several cases, cloning and sequencing of the amplified products confirmed the high levels of similarity between the sequence found in non-pneumophila species with that of the L. pneumophila mip gene. This confirms previous reports that mip related genes are widespread among Legionellaceae and therefore specific detection of the species L. pneumophila cannot be based on mip-targeted amplification.
嗜肺军团菌的巨噬细胞感染增强子基因（mip）是该菌种的主要毒力因子。因此，有人提出通过扩增检测mip来评估临床和环境样本中嗜肺军团菌的存在情况。使用mip特异性引物进行DNA扩增，随后用内部探针进行Southern印迹杂交，研究了军团菌科内mip相关序列的分布。此次尝试中筛选了39个军团菌科物种（48个血清群）。采用这种方法，在89%的受试物种中观察到了与mip相关的序列，包括最近描述的费尔菲尔德军团菌、兰辛军团菌和莎士比亚军团菌。在一些情况下，对扩增产物进行克隆和测序证实，非嗜肺军团菌物种中发现的序列与嗜肺军团菌mip基因的序列具有高度相似性。这证实了先前的报道，即mip相关基因在军团菌科中广泛存在，因此不能基于靶向mip的扩增来特异性检测嗜肺军团菌物种。
