Although the Kauffmann-White classification scheme is currently the gold standard for Salmonella serotyping, it has been known to be difficult to be tedious, and difficult to perform. This is due to the method being very time consuming (up to 5 days), requiring much anti-sera, and relying too much on personal interpretation of experiments. The most difficult part in performing the Kauffmann-White method is in isolating a phase on the flagellar antigen. Only one phase on the flagellar, H antigen can be expressed at a time, the H antigen can thus be broken down into the H1 and H2 antigen. The expression of either the H1 or H2 antigen relies on a number of factors than can be hard to manage in a standard laboratory.
Identifying and mapping organisms by genetic code has been the trend in biology for the past decade, and so this concept has begun to be applied to the identification of pathogenic organisms. Polymerase chain reaction(PCR) methods have been used by Maple Leaf as well as many other organizations for the identification of pathogens on the genus and species level. PCR-based techniques have proven to be simple and quick enough for most…show more content… This allows key locations of differing genetic material to be analyzed for unique genetic markers. In MLPA, a probe used to find a location along the genetic material is formed by two separate oligonucletides that will hybridize to sequences adjacent to one another. The two oligonucleotides will ligate to form the probe when they are adjacent to one another. Differences in DNA at the probe's oligonucleotide locations will prevent ligation from occuring, and will thus hinder the amplification process in the PCR, allowing only the genetic material that matches the probe to be amplified in PCR, thus providing the reference to which the genetic code can be compared