Sizing the Fusobacterium nucleatum genome by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis.

The genome sizes of Fusobacterium nucleatum strains F1, F3, F6, ATCC 10953, ATCC 25586 and Fev1 were determined by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The restriction enzymes SmaI, SacII,SalI and XhoI were found to generate a reasonable number of DNA fragments which could be separated by PFGE in agarose gels. The apparent chromosomal lengths of the F. nucleatum strains were determined to be approximately 2.4 million base pairs. This was within the size-range found by experiments exploiting renaturation kinetics.