BMC Microbiology BioMed Central Research article Open Access Reliable identification of mycobacterial species by PCR-restriction enzyme analysis (PRA)-hsp65 in a reference laboratory and elaboration of a sequence-based extended algorithm of PRA-hsp65 patterns Erica Chimara1, Lucilaine Ferrazoli1, Suely Yoko Misuka Ueky1, Maria Conceição Martins1, Alan Mitchel Durham2, Robert D Arbeit3 and Sylvia Cardoso Leão*4 Address: 1Instituto Adolfo Lutz, São Paulo, Brazil, 2Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, 3Tufts University School of Medicine, Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Boston, Massachusetts, USA and 4Departamento de Microbiologia, Imunologia e Parasitologia, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Email: Erica Chimara -
[email protected]; Lucilaine Ferrazoli -
[email protected]; Suely Yoko Misuka Ueky -
[email protected]; Maria Conceição Martins -
[email protected]; Alan Mitchel Durham -
[email protected]; Robert D Arbeit -
[email protected]; Sylvia Cardoso Leão* -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 20 March 2008 Received: 17 October 2007 Accepted: 20 March 2008 BMC Microbiology 2008, 8:48 doi:10.1186/1471-2180-8-48 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/8/48 © 2008 Chimara et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Identification of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) based on phenotypic tests is time-consuming, labor-intensive, expensive and often provides erroneous or inconclusive results.