Rapid identification of clinically significant species and taxa of aerobic actinomycetes, including Actinomadura, Gordona, Nocardia, Rhodococcus, Streptomyces, and Tsukamurella isolates, by DNA amplification and restriction endonuclease analysis.

A previously described PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) identification schema for Nocardia that used an amplified 439-bp segment (amplicon) of the 65-kDa heat shock protein gene was evaluated for potential use with isolates of all clinically significant aerobic actinomycetes. The study included 28 reference (American Type Culture Collection) strains and 198 clinical isolates belonging to 20 taxonomic groups. Of these 198 isolates, 188 could be differentiated by this PCR-RFLP method.