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Sequence homologies between Mycoplasma and Chlamydia spp. lead to false-positive results in chlamydial cell cultures tested for mycoplasma contamination with a commercial PCR assay.

ABSTRACT: Mycoplasma contamination is a frequent problem in chlamydial cell culture. After obtaining contradictory contamination results, we compared three commercial PCR kits for mycoplasma detection. One kit signaled contamination in mycoplasma-free Chlamydia pneumoniae cultures. Sequencing of cloned PCR products revealed primer homology with the chlamydial genome as the basis of this false-positive result.

SUBMITTER: Maass V

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3187304 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Sequence homologies between Mycoplasma and Chlamydia spp. lead to false-positive results in chlamydial cell cultures tested for mycoplasma contamination with a commercial PCR assay.

Maass Viola V Kern Jan Marco JM Poeckl Matthias M Maass Matthias M

Journal of clinical microbiology 20110817 10

Mycoplasma contamination is a frequent problem in chlamydial cell culture. After obtaining contradictory contamination results, we compared three commercial PCR kits for mycoplasma detection. One kit signaled contamination in mycoplasma-free Chlamydia pneumoniae cultures. Sequencing of cloned PCR products revealed primer homology with the chlamydial genome as the basis of this false-positive result. ...[more]

PMID: 21849688

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Project description:BackgroundIn 2006, a novel gammaretrovirus, XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus), was discovered in some prostate tumors. A more recent study indicated that this infectious retrovirus can be detected in 67% of patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), but only very few healthy controls (4%). However, several groups have published to date that they could not identify XMRV RNA or DNA sequences in other cohorts of CFS patients, while another group detected murine leukemia virus (MLV)-like sequences in 87% of such patients, but only 7% of healthy controls. Since there is a high degree of similarity between XMRV and abundant endogenous MLV proviruses, it is important to distinguish contaminating mouse sequences from true infections.ResultsDNA from the peripheral blood of 112 CFS patients and 36 healthy controls was tested for XMRV with two different PCR assays. A TaqMan qPCR assay specific for XMRV pol sequences was able to detect viral DNA from 2 XMRV-infected cells (~ 10-12 pg DNA) in up to 5 ?g of human genomic DNA, but yielded negative results in the test of 600 ng genomic DNA from 100,000 peripheral blood cells of all samples tested. However, positive results were obtained with some of these samples, using a less specific nested PCR assay for a different XMRV sequence. DNA sequencing of the PCR products revealed a wide variety of virus-related sequences, some identical to those found in prostate cancer and CFS patients, others more closely related to known endogenous MLVs. However, all samples that tested positive for XMRV and/or MLV DNA were also positive for the highly abundant intracisternal A-type particle (IAP) long terminal repeat and most were positive for murine mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase sequences. No contamination was observed in any of the negative control samples, containing those with no DNA template, which were included in each assay.ConclusionsMouse cells contain upwards of 100 copies each of endogenous MLV DNA. Even much less than one cell's worth of DNA can yield a detectable product using highly sensitive PCR technology. It is, therefore, vital that contamination by mouse DNA be monitored with adequately sensitive assays in all samples tested.

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Dataset Information

Sequence homologies between Mycoplasma and Chlamydia spp. lead to false-positive results in chlamydial cell cultures tested for mycoplasma contamination with a commercial PCR assay.

Publications

Sequence homologies between Mycoplasma and Chlamydia spp. lead to false-positive results in chlamydial cell cultures tested for mycoplasma contamination with a commercial PCR assay.

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