FIG 2.

Detection of Blastomyces dermatitidis DNA from environmental samples. B. dermatitidis DNA was amplified by PCR using BAD1-specific primers (25) with total soil DNA dilutions of 1:1, 1:5, or 1:10 for each environmental soil DNA sample. Purified B. dermatitidis DNA was serially diluted to determine the limit of detection (lanes 2 to 7). The PCR products were loaded and visualized on a 1.5% agarose gel using ethidium bromide and image inversion (dark bands on light background). PCR product bands in environmental samples of equivalent size to the purified B. dermatitidis control DNA BAD1 promoter fragment, indicated by black arrowhead, were purified and sequenced, and a BLAST search of the amplicon was used to determine sequence identity. Three positive environmental soil samples from ITA-14 are shown.