Isolation, detection of virulence genes, antibiotic resistance genes, plasmid profile, and molecular typing among Vibrio parahaemolyticus isolated in Malaysian seawater from recreational beaches and fish

Vet World Vol.12 July-2019 Article-32

Research Article

Veterinary World, 12(7): 1140-1149

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2019.1140-1149

Orooba Meteab Faja¹, Ali Abd Sharad², Khansa Mohammed Younis³, Merriam Ghadhanfar Alwan⁴, Basima Jasim Mohammed¹, and Asmat Ahmad⁴

1. Department of Public Health, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Al-Qadisiyah, Iraq.
2. Department of Biology, College of Education for Pure Science, Anbar University, Iraq.
3. Department of Biology and Microbiology, Faculty of Sciences, Mosul University, Mosul, Iraq.
4. Department of Biology, School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, The National University of Malaysia 43600 UKM, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.

Background and Aim: Despite the importance of the global emergence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus infections worldwide, there has been scanty information on its occurrence in Malaysian seawaters and fish. This study aimed to determine the occurrence of V. parahaemolyticus isolates using polymerase chain reaction targeted at toxin operon gene, thermostable direct hemolysin (tdh), and tdh-related hemolysin genes and to determine antibiotic resistance pattern, genes, and plasmid profile of V. parahaemolyticus from Malaysian seawaters and fish.

Materials and Methods: Samples were collected from four recreational beaches in Malaysia (Port Klang; Bachok; Port Dickson; and Mersing). Thiosulfate-citrate-bile salts-sucrose (TCBS) agar and chromogenic Vibrio agar were used for isolation and identification. Colonies with yellow color on TCBS and green color on chromogenic vibrio (CV) agar were considered to be V. parahaemolyticus and they were subjected to biochemical tests. All V. parahaemolyticus isolates were further subjected to identification using seven specific gene markers.

Results: Seventy-three Vibrio isolates were recovered. Only one gene tdh> from seawater isolates of Vibrio has high virulence gene percentage (95.23%). Two genes alkaline serine protease (asp) and (tdh) had high percentage of virulence (83.87% and 80.64%, respectively) from fish. Comparatively, fish isolates have a higher virulence percentage compared to seawater isolates. Only gene streptomycin resistance B (strB) from seawater had 100% of the resistance genes. All isolates were multi-antibiotic resistant. Seventeen antibiotic resistance patterns were observed. The isolates had plasmids of varying sizes ranging from 2.7 kb to 42.4 kb. Dendrogram based on antibiotic resistance patterns of V. parahaemolyticus isolates discriminated the isolates into three clusters.

Conclusion: This study demonstrated the occurrence of pathogenic, multi-antibiotic-resistant V. parahaemolyticus strains in Malaysian coastal waters and fish, and this could constitute potential public health risks. Keywords: antibiotic resistance genes, plasmid profile, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, virulence genes.

Keywords: antibiotic resistance genes, plasmid profile, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, virulence genes.

How to cite this article: Faja OM, Sharad AA, Yoanis KM, Alwan MG, Mohammed BJ, Ahmad A (2019) Isolation, detection of virulence genes, antibiotic resistance genes, plasmid profile, and molecular typing among Vibrio parahaemolyticus isolated in Malaysian seawater from recreational beaches and fish, Veterinary World, 12(7): 1140-1149.

Received: 04-02-2019 Accepted: 31-05-2019 Published online: 28-07-2019

Corresponding author: Orooba Meteab Faja E-mail: orooba.ukm@gmail.com

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2019.1140-1149

Copyright: Faja, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.