Strains were identified by sequencing of 16S rRNA genes via
polymerase chain reaction using 16Sf (50
-GAGAGTTTGATYCTGGC
TCAG) and 16Sr (50
-GAAGGAGGTGWTCCARCCGCA) primers as previously
described (Whitehead and Cotta, 2001). The resulting products
(about 1.6 kbp) were purified using a 5 Prime PCR purification
kit, and sequenced by standard methods using the forward primer.
The sequences obtained were compared with sequences in the
GenBank database using BLASTN program (Altschul et al., 1997)
at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (http://
blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/).