EN
The aim of the study was to identify the affinity of 10 Staphylococcus strains isolated from table chicken eggs to specific species. Preliminary analysis performed by API ID32 Staph test identified these strains as S. aureus, but they exhibited a negative reaction in the tube coagulase test. Thus, the analysed strains were initially characterised as Staphylococcus aureus-like (SAL). Further characterisation was performed by genoty pie methods, using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of the coagulase gene (coa) and sequencing of the gene rpoB. An attempt was also made to identify the isolated Staphylococcus strains by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. The results indicated that none of the strains tested belonged to the species S. aureus. The rpoB sequences of five isolates showed the highest sequence similarity to S. haemolyticus, three isolates to S. chromogenes, and one isolate to S. epidermidis. One strain (SAL4) remained unidentified in this analy sis. The results obtained using mass spectrometry were comparable to those based on gene sequence analysis. Strain SAL4, which could not be identified by sequencing, was identified by MALDI-TOF as Staphylococcus chromogenes.