Wong Hin-Chung, Chen Shau-Yan, Chen Meng-Yi, Oliver James D, Hor Lien-I, Tsai Wen-Cherng
Department of Microbiology, Soochow University, 70 Lin-Si Rd., Taipei, Taiwan 111, Republic of China.
Appl Environ Microbiol. 2004 Sep;70(9):5153-8. doi: 10.1128/AEM.70.9.5153-5158.2004.
Vibrio vulnificus is a marine bacterium that causes human wound infections and septicemia with a high mortality rate. V. vulnificus strains from different clinical and environmental sources or geographic regions have been successfully characterized by ribotyping and several other methods. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) is a highly discriminative method, but previous studies suggested that it was not suitable for examining the correlation of V. vulnificus strains from different origins. We employed PFGE to determine its efficacy for characterizing V. vulnificus strains from different geographic regions, characterizing a total of 153 strains from clinical and environmental origins from the United States and Taiwan after SfiI or NotI digestion. V. vulnificus strains showed a high intraspecific diversity by PFGE after SfiI or NotI digestion, and about 12% of the strains could not be typed by the use of either of these enzymes. For PFGE with SfiI digestion, most of the clinical and environmental strains from the United States were grouped into cluster A, while the strains from Taiwan were grouped into other clusters. Clinical strains from the United States showed a higher level of genetic homogeneity than clinical strains from Taiwan, and environmental strains from both regions showed a similarly high level of heterogeneity. PFGE with NotI digestion was useful for studying the correlation of clinical strains from the United States and Taiwan, but it was not suitable for analyzing environmental strains. The results showed that PFGE with SfiI digestion may be used to characterize V. vulnificus strains from distant geographic regions, with NotI being a recommended alternative enzyme.
创伤弧菌是一种海洋细菌，可引发人类伤口感染和败血症，死亡率很高。通过核糖体分型和其他几种方法，已成功鉴定出来自不同临床和环境来源或地理区域的创伤弧菌菌株。脉冲场凝胶电泳（PFGE）是一种具有高度鉴别力的方法，但先前的研究表明，它不适用于检测来自不同来源的创伤弧菌菌株之间的相关性。我们采用PFGE来确定其对鉴定来自不同地理区域的创伤弧菌菌株的有效性，在经SfiI或NotI消化后，共鉴定了来自美国和台湾的153株临床和环境来源的菌株。经SfiI或NotI消化后，PFGE显示创伤弧菌菌株具有较高的种内多样性，约12%的菌株无法用这两种酶中的任何一种进行分型。对于经SfiI消化的PFGE，来自美国的大多数临床和环境菌株被归为A簇，而来自台湾的菌株则被归为其他簇。来自美国的临床菌株比来自台湾的临床菌株表现出更高水平的遗传同质性，并且来自这两个地区的环境菌株都表现出同样高水平的异质性。经NotI消化的PFGE可用于研究来自美国和台湾的临床菌株之间的相关性，但不适用于分析环境菌株。结果表明，经SfiI消化的PFGE可用于鉴定来自遥远地理区域的创伤弧菌菌株，NotI是一种推荐的替代酶。
