Investigation of phenotypic variations amongst Mycoplasma bovis field German isolates using SDS-PAGE

Mycoplasma bovis is a major bacterial pathogen causing widespread respiratory disease, mastitis, and arthritis in cattle. Ineffective drugs treatments, culling of infected cows and loss of milk production can lead to significant economic losses in dairy farms. The early detection of cows excreting M. bovis bacteria to prevent mastitis outbreak is necessary. In our study the percentage of M. bovis infection among dairy herd was recorded by cultivation in combination with digitonin test and confirmed by species specific PCR as 4%. The protein profile of the isolated field German strains was compared to M. bovis reference strain Donetta PG45 using SDS-PAGE. The pattern of the reference strain was different from that of field strains as well as a marked heterogenicity among the field strains was noticed.