Resuscitation and morphological alterations of Salmonella bovismorbificans cells under starvation in soil

Salmonella bovismorbificans, rare serovar, isolated from patient in Tunisia were incubated during 13 years in soil. After its resuscitation, the cells showed a biochemical profile completely inactive on Api 20E system. These cells recuperated their initial characters after 6 months of incubation in Tryptic Soy broth. The atomic force micrographs showed a reduction of the cells size and an evolution to coccoid-shapes. After resuscitation S. bovismorbificans cells recuperated their original rod shape. These cells showed an altered envelope. The resuscitate cells were identified by PCR following the amplification of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of 16S–23S rRNA gene.