Abstract

Mohamed M. Hassan and Ismail A. Ismail

Mobile phones are indispensable accessories both professionally and socially but they are frequently used in environments of high bacteria presence. These can harbor various potential pathogens and become an exogenous source of nosocomial infections. A total of 91 mobile phones belonging to staff members in Taif University screened for bacterial isolates using bacteriological methods. Bacteriological analysis revealed that about (85.1 %) of mobile phone samples were contaminated with bacteria. Some bacterial species were isolated from mobile phone samples. They identified as Gordonia, Pantoea, Ochrobactrum, Staphylococcus and Bacillus spp. Genetic diversity of these bacteria was investigated by Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis. The fingerprinting patterns revealed two main clusters of strains with a similarity level of approximately 55.8%. Phylogenetic analysis of the partial 16S rRNA sequences of bacterial strains were divided them into five species with similarity value ranged from 97 to 100 % comparing with bacterial sequences in NCBI database. These results recommend that mobile phones can be heavily colonized by high quantities of pathogenic bacteria and thus potential sources of disease transmission requiring application of sound personal hygiene as preventive methods.