Abstract
Twenty-eight strains of Sporothrix schenckii, isolated from different clinical types of cutaneous sporotrichosis, nonlesional skin and soil, were examined to know the morphology of yeast-form cells and the temperature sensitivity. Each strain was found to have slight differences in the morphology and the temperature sensitivity. However, these slight differences on above points were not correlated with each other. Nine out of twenty-eight strains were selected for determing GC content of DNA. The DNA was extracted and purified by modified Marmur's method from each strain and the base compositions of DNA were determined by thermal melting method. They were found to be almost constant (52.5-53.7mol% G+C), which was not correlated with heterogeneity in the clinical type of lesion, the morphology of yeast-form cell and the growth temperature. It was suggested that these minor differences observed in the different clinical type, the morphology and growth temperature may be regarded as the variations in the same species.
