Comparative Evaluation of the VITEK 2 System and Species-specific PCR Methods for the Detection of Vibrio Species Isolated from Shrimp

Vibrio is a genus of Gram-negative, curved, halophilic, and non-spore-forming bacteria. Some of the Vibrio species, such as V. cholerae and V. parahaemolyticus, often contaminate seafood products and occasionally cause human diseases when the seafood products are ingested. A total of 24 Vibrio strains were isolated from shrimp samples on Thiosulphate citrate bile salt sucrose (TCBS) media in this study. All of the 24 isolates were confirmed to belong to the genus Vibrio by using 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses. Vitek 2 system and species-specific poly- merase chain reaction (PCR) methods were used to further identify a total of 29 Vibrio strains at the species level, including the 24 shrimp Vibrio isolates and five Vibrio reference strains. The specificities of the two methods to iden- tify Vibrio strains at the species level were compared in this study. The species-specific PCR method was designed to detect five different Vibrio species, such as Vibrio cholerae, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Vibrio vulnificus, Vibrio algi- nolyticus, and Vibrio mimicus. From the 24 Vibrio shrimp isolates, the Vitek 2 system method could identify 15 (62.5%) strains as Vibrio species and 7 (29.2%) strains as non-Vibrio species, but could not identify the rest 2 (8.3%) strains. But species-specific PCR method could identify 16 (66.7%) strains as Vibrio species and could not identify the rest 8 (33.3%) strains. Among the 24 Vibrio shrimp strains, these two methods could unanimously identify 7 (7/24, 29.2%) strains (2 V. parahaemolyticus, 4 V. alginolyticus, and 1 V. mimicus). Considering that such different identifi- cation results were obtained using the two different methods in this study, identification method for Vibrio species must be carefully chosen.