The main emphasis of this project has been the application of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) based approaches to typing pathogenic micro- organisms. Considerable progress has been made toward the ultimate goal of having discriminatory typing strategies available for a wide variety of clinically significant micro-organisms. PFGE protocols are currently in place for typing staphylococci, enteric Gram-negative rods, Pseudomonas and related species, and enterococci. In our first year of utilizing these protocols we have been involved in investigating a number of potential nosocomial outbreaks in the Clinical Center, working in close co-operation with the Hospital Epidemiology Service. In addition to continuing to increase the range of applications of PFGE, we envisage expanding this project to investigate strategies for typing eukaryotic micro-organisms, in particular mycelial fungi. The use of restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) based techniques have been reported to have excellent discriminatory power in differentiating strains of Aspergillus fumigatus. We intend to adapt these techniques to our laboratory, and examine the ability of this approach to type other filamentous fungi.
