Abstract
Vibrio cholerae is a motile gram-negative bacterium found in brackish water and the etiological agent of the fecal-oral disease cholera. Classical and El Tor are two main biotypes that make up the V. cholerae O1 serogroup, which each display unique genotypic and phenotypic characteristics that allow for reliable biotype characterization. While treatment for cholera is much the same despite the causative strain’s biotype, such classification can be imperative for laboratory experiments and may have broader impacts in the biomedical field. In the early 2000s, clinical isolates were identified that contained genotypic and phenotypic traits from both biotypes. The newly identified hybrids, termed El Tor variants, have caused clinical and environmental isolate biotype identification to be more complicated than previous single-assay identification. Herein, we describe a series of PCR-based genetic screens (tcpA and ctxB) and phenotypic assays (polymyxin B resistance, citrate metabolism, proteolytic activity, hemolytic activity, motility, and Voges-Proskauer). Together, these assays are used for reliable biotype characterization of V. cholerae clinical (and environmental) isolates.
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Acknowledgments
Research reported in this publication was supported by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM103506 and a Plymouth State University Research Advisory Council (RAC) grant for MSS.
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Brumfield, K.D., Carignan, B.M., Son, M.S. (2018). Genotypic and Phenotypic Assays to Distinguish Vibrio cholerae Biotype. In: Sikora, A. (eds) Vibrio Cholerae. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1839. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8685-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8685-9_2
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