A molecular typing study on Vibrio strains implicated in shrimp disease outbreaks in New Caledonia and Japan was conducted by using AP-PCR (arbitrarily primed PCR). It allowed rapid identification of isolates at the genospecies level and studies of infraspecific population structures of epidemiological interest. Clusters identified within the species Vibrio penaeicida were related to their area...

AIMS To determine the abundance of faecal and nonfaecal bacteria related to human and animal health, as free living or associated with small (>64 microm) and large (>200 microm) plankton, samples were collected monthly from the coastal zone at Messina (Italy). METHODS AND RESULTS Different enrichment and selective cultural methods were used to determine the abundance of bacteria in sea water ...

We report the first genome sequence of the pathogenic Vibrio vulnificus biotype 3. This draft genome sequence of the environmental strain VVyb1(BT3), isolated in Israel, provides a representation of this newly emerged clonal group, which reveals higher similarity to the clinical strains of biotype 1 than to the environmental ones.

Ballast water (BW) is a major transport vector of exotic aquatic species and pathogenic microorganisms. The wide-ranging spread of toxigenic Vibrio cholerae O1 from harbor areas has been frequently ascribed to discharge of contaminated BW into eutrophic coastal environments, such as during the onset of the seventh cholera pandemic in South America in the early 1990s. To determine the microbiolo...

The recent emergence of the human-pathogenic Vibrio vulnificus in Israel was investigated by using multilocus genotype data and modern molecular evolutionary analysis tools. We show that this pathogen is a hybrid organism that evolved by the hybridization of the genomes from 2 distinct and independent populations. These findings provide clear evidence of how hybridization between 2 existing and...

Vibrio cholerae consists of pathogenic strains that cause sporadic gastrointestinal illness or epidemic cholera disease and nonpathogenic strains that grow and persist in coastal aquatic ecosystems. Previous studies of disease-causing strains have shown V. cholerae to be a primarily clonal bacterial species, but isolates analyzed have been strongly biased toward pathogenic genotypes, while repr...

Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a halophilic seafood-borne pathogen, is one of the 12 known pathogenic species of the genus Vibrio. The halophile is one of the major bacterial causes of food-borne illness that affects people who consume raw or improperly cooked seafood. This bacterium was first identified from the intestinal contents of a victim of food poisoning who had consumed half-dried sardines c...

A lectin from the hemolymph of the banana shrimp Penaeus (Fenneropenaeus) merguiensis expressed higher agglutination activity against rabbit erythrocytes than those from human, and its activity was Cadependent. The hemagglutinating activity of the hemolymph lectin was stable up to 55 C and optimal at pH 7.5-8.0. N-acetylated sugars, ManNAc, GlcNAc, GalNAc, and NeuNAc, were effective inhibitors ...