Genotyping of Bacillus anthracis vaccine strains by multilocus VNTR analysis

In the course of this investigation, we described the genotypic variations across 18 variable chromosomal loci of the five known anthrax bacillus vaccine strains from the collection of microbial cultures of the 48th Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The persistence of inheriting VNTR loci and their potential application in gene identification were estimated in closely related B. anthracis strains. The genetic profile of each of the studied vaccine strains has been determined for all 18 polymorphic loci. Sequencing of their amplification products was performed. We have confirmed that the variations in the electrophoretic mobility of the amplicons are due to the presence of repeats with different numbers of copies in their structure.