Thirty clinical specimens consisting of 20 swabs and 10 fine needle aspirates taken respectively from ulcers and pre-ulcerative lesions of suspected BU patients were used in this study. The fine needle aspirate specimens were kept in 1 ml phosphate buffered saline (PBS) and swabs were stored dry in sterile tubes. Each swab was transferred into a tube containing 2 ml milli-Q purified water (Millipore Corporation, Billerica, MA) and gently vortexed for 5 sec and then removed. Portions 250 ml of the sample suspensions were transferred to separate new sterile eppendorf tubes containing 250 ml of lysis buffer (1.6 M GuHCl, 60 mM Tris pH 7.4, 1% Triton X-100, 60 mM EDTA, Tween-20 10%), 50 ml proteinase-K and 250 ml glass beads.