title: Typing of clinical and environmental Aeromonas sp. strains by random amplified polymorphic DNA PCR, repetitive extragenic palindromic PCR, and enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence PCR.
abstract: A collection of 120 strains isolated from stool specimens collected from humans suffering from gastroenteritis and from environmental samples were analyzed by random amplified polymorphic DNA PCR (RAPD), repetitive extragenic palindromic PCR (REP-PCR), and enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence PCR (ERIC-PCR). Species of Aeromonoas hydrophila, A. bestiarum, A. salmonicida, A. caviae, A. media, and A. veronii revealed clonal structure. There was no dominant clone causing gastroenteritis in humans. Moreover, there was no genetic similarity between clinical and environmental strains of Aeromonas sp. isolated from different geographical areas as well as from the same geographical area. Some clones colonized specific ecosystems, e.g., drinking water distribution systems. RAPD and ERIC-PCR methods had the same discriminatory power and proved to be useful for epidemiological investigation and population genetic analysis of Aeromonas spp., whereas REP-PCR was less effective for differentiating the isolates of Aeromonas spp.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Institute of Experimental Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, 61-701 Poznań, Poland.
authors.forename: Ewa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Szczuka
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kaznowski
mesh_terms: D000333:Aeromonas / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics; D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting; D006801:Humans; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods*; D019105:Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA Technique / Q000379:methods*