Objective: To investigate the inherent characteristics of V. cholera and other vibrios and the association between them.
Methods: Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), DNA sequences analysis, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and average linkage cluster analysis were used to study V. cholera including 3 strains of O139, 4 strains of E1 Tor biotype, 3 strains of classical and 3 other vibrios.
Results: V. cholera O139 contained the genomic sequences of CTX A2-B as well as O1 V. cholera, indicating that their homologous nucleotides was 96.9%-98.7%, and other vibrios did not contain CTX. O1 V. cholera and other vibrios were divided into 4 groups by RAPD: classical; O139 and E1 Tor; V. paraheamolyticus and V. vulnificus; and V. flluvialis. The O139 DNA fingerprints of RAPD were almost as same as E1 Tor biotype, whose average linkage cluster distance was 0, similar with classical biotype, whose average linkage cluster distance was 2.07, much different from V. paraheamolyticus and others with the average linkage cluster distance being 6.76-8.54.
Conclusion: V. cholera and other vibrios are polymorphic in inherent characteristics. Being as same as the inherent characteristics of E1 Tor, O139 may evoluted from E1 Tor biotype. And also the inherent characteristics of V. parahemolytisus were as same as those of V. vulnificus.