Detecting and Molecular Typing of Vibrio parahaemolyticus

HIN-CHUNG WONG

Department of Microbiology, Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan 111, R.O.C.

(Received: December 10, 2002; Accepted: January 9, 2003)

ABSTRACT

   Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a prevalent food-borne pathogen in many Asian countries and has been spreading rapidly following the appearance of pandemic strains. This article reviews conventional and molecular methods for culturing, identifying, enumerating and rapidly detecting V. parahaemolyticus and its virulence factors, such as thermostable direct hemolysin (TDH), TDH-related hemolysin and thermolabile hemolysin. It also discusses various molecular typing methods, namely, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, ribotyping, random amplified polymorphic DNA and three other polymerase chain reaction methods based on specific conserved nucleotide
sequences, such as ribosomal gene spacer, repetitive extragenic palindromic and enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequences, for use in epidemiological investigations of this pathogen.

Key words: Vibrio parahaemolyticus, detection, molecular typing, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, PCR