Abstract:

Objective: The enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence-polymerase chain reaction (ERIC-PCR)
and repetitive extragenic palindromic element-polymerase chain reaction (REP-PCR) were used to analyze the types of 88
Vibrio parahaemolyticus including 2 standard strains, 13 laboratory strains and 73 isolated strains. Methods: REP and ERIC
primers were used to amplify the repeated sequences. NTsys-pc software was used to calculate the discriminative index of
REP- and ERIC-PCR with Dice coefficients. Results: All 88 tested V. parahamolyticus could be typed by REP- and ERICPCR
clearly and revealed abundant genetic diversity in V. parahamolyticus. According to the results of REP-PCR-amplified
5–9 bands within 609–4200 bp, V. parahamolyticus was typed into 5 groups and 12 types with discrimination index of 0.93,
and the tdh+ strains with resolving index of 0.86 could be classified in Group I. According to ERIC-PCR-amplified 5–11
bands within 400–7593 bp, V. parahamolyticus was typed into 7 groups and 11 types with discrimination index of 0.94, and
the tdh+ strains with discrimination index of 0.76 could be classified in group I. Conclusion: The isolated tdh+ strains are
clustered together with standard strains using the two methods. Although both methods exhibit good typing capability, REPPCR
is more repeatable and stable than ERIC-PCR.

Key words: Vibrio parahaemolyticus, tdh, enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence-polymerase chain reaction (ERIC-PCR), repetitive extragenic palindromic-polymerase chain reaction (REP-PCR), typingg