Southern blot analysis of Dra I-digested genomic DNA of L. paraplantarum strains using LpF2 as a probe showed that LpF2 is distinctive of strain FBA1 among 16 L. paraplantarum strains. Because PD0325901 in vitro both ERIC- and RAPD-PCR are fast and technically simple methods, they are useful for the rapid discrimination of L. paraplantarum strains

and for the development of new strain-specific DNA markers for identifying industrially important strains. Lactobacillus paraplantarum, a species phenotypically close to Lactobacillus plantarum, was characterized in 1996 (Curk et al., 1996). Few phylogenetic studies of the species have been reported (Torriani et al., 2001a, b), and methods for discrimination between strains have yet to be developed. On the other hand, some L. paraplantarum strains have received

attention owing to their potential uses in food production or preservation (Lee et al., 2007; Chun et al., 2008). We evaluated the effects of 200 heat-killed lactic acid bacteria (LAB) strains on the production of hyaluronate and type I collagen when applied to normal human dermal fibroblast cells in vitro and found five strains with high efficacy (S. Miyata , K. Yamamoto, S. Sakata, C. Suzuki, H. Kimoto-Nira, K. Mizumachi & Y. Kitagawa, unpublished data). These strains (including one called FBA1) improved the skin integrity of HR-1 hairless mice fed a reduced-protein diet. These effects are strain dependent; hence, it is important to develop reliable methods to identify and discriminate strains of L. paraplantarum. CX-4945 Enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) sequences are highly conserved DNA sequences that occur as multiple copies in the genomes of enteric bacteria and Vibrio species (Sharples & Lloyd, 1990; Mercier et al., 1996; Tcherneva et al., 1996; Wilson & Sharp, 2006). Methods using ERIC-PCR have been used to classify closely related strains of enterococci (Wei et al., 2004). The random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) method has been used to classify various organisms

from bacteria to plants (Van Reenen & Dicks, 1996; Torriani et al., 2001a; Venkatachalam et al., 2004; Nomura et al., 2006; Walczak et al., 2007). RAPD entails PCR amplification with a single, short oligonucleotide primer that does not strongly match particular sites in target genomes, Oxymatrine under low-stringency conditions, for annealing. In most cases, both ERIC- and RAPD-PCR generate several DNA bands that enable species-level or sometimes strain-level differentiation of bacteria. The aim of this study was to develop a fast and simple method to discriminate strains of L. paraplantarum using PCR and to develop a DNA marker to identify specifically the particular strain. We focused on an L. paraplantarum FBA1 strain, which improved the skin integrity of HR-1 hairless mice fed a reduced-protein diet, and developed a pair of FBA1-specific PCR primers and an FBA1-specific DNA fragment based on ERIC-PCR.