Abstract
Vibrio vulniflicus an estuarine bacterium is associated with severe wound infections and fatal septicemia related to consumption of raw shellfish. In this study we screened the two whole genome sequences available for V vulniflicus in GenBank for the presence of variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) regions. Five potential VNTR loci with unit repeat size ranging from 6-7 nucleotides were identified for V vulnificus genome. One of the loci designated Vvl was selected to detect the repeat number present in V vulnificus strains isolated from oyster samples in India. Twenty six of the thirty samples tested were found to be highly polymorphic for the Vvl focus. Copy numbers for the hexanucleotide motif ranged from 4-55, giving rise to a total of 17 polymorphic groups. Our analysis, shows that different genotypic variants exist in the environment and the VNTR loci studied can be used as a marker for strain discrimination and in epidemiological study of this organism. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.