| Summary: | Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a food-borne pathogen that causes pathogenic symptoms such as diarrhea and abdominal pain. Currently no studies have shown that either pathogenic and non-pathogenic V. parahaemolyticus possess growth heterogeneity in a human environment, such as in gastric and intestinal fluids. The tlh gene is present in both pathogenic and non-pathogenic V. parahaemolyticus strains, while the tdh and trh genes are only present in pathogenic strains. This study firstly applied simulated human gastric fluids to explore growth variability of 50 strains of V. parahaemolyticus at 37°C. The bacterial growth curves were fitted by primary modified Gompertz model, and the maximum growth rate (μmax), lag time (LT), and their CV values were calculated to compare the stress response of pathogenic and non-pathogenic V. parahaemolyticus to simulated human gastric fluids. Results showed that the simulated human gastric fluids treatment significantly increased the μmax of pathogenic strains and shortened the lag time, while decreased the μmax of non-pathogenic strains and prolonged the lag time. Meanwhile, the CV values of genotypes (tlh+/tdh+/trh–) evidently increased, showing that the pathogenic genotype (tlh+/tdh+/trh–) strains had strong activity to simulated gastric fluids. All of the results indicated that the V. parahaemolyticus strains exhibited a great stress-resistant variability and growth heterogeneity to the simulated gastric fluids, which provides a novel insight to unlock the efficient control of pathogenic V. parahaemolyticus.
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