The PCR products were resolved by electrophoresis on a 2% agarose gel, stained with ethidium bromide and photographed using a gel documentation system (Herolab, Weisloch, Germany). The primers used are shown in Fig. 1. To confirm the authenticity of A. veronii isolates, gyrB3F and gyrB14R primers (Yanez et al., 2003) were used to amplify a gyrB fragment of approximately 1100 bp. PCR products of the three A. veronii isolates with trhP and trh6 primers were purified using a QIAquick PCR purification

kit (Qiagen) and cloned into the pQE 30-UA linearized vector (Qiagen), according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Plasmids were purified from the positive clones using the FastPlasmid Mini kit (Eppendorf) SGI-1776 nmr and sent for sequencing (Genei™). Two partial sequences learn more (accession nos. EU022116 and EU022114) and one

complete sequence (accession no. EU022115) of the trh gene have been deposited in the GenBank. A sequence similarity search for the trh nucleotide sequence was performed using the online blast (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST) tool. The phylogenetic tree was constructed from clustalw-generated alignment using the neighbor-joining method. The signal peptide sequence was located using signalp ver.3.0 (http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/SignalP). To rule out the possibility of misidentification of these isolates, PCR targeting of the toxR gene of V. parahaemolyticus was performed (Kim

et al., 1999). Several studies suggest that the trh gene of V. parahaemolyticus is correlated to the urease phenotype (Huq et al., 1979; Nolan et al., 1984; Cai & Ni, 1996). To study whether A. veronii strains are harboring the entire trh gene cluster, PCR was performed using primers targeting the transposase and the ureR gene of V. parahaemolyticus (Parvathi et al., 2006). To confirm that sequence variation at the primer annealing site is not the reason for the negative reaction, PCR was performed using another pair of primers TTU3 (5′-CTG GCG AAT GGC CTC TTC ATC-3′) and TTU2 (5′-GGA CAG GGT TTG GTA GCT CTG C-3′), amplifying a 1577-bp Resveratrol region between transposase and ureR genes surrounding the trh gene (Parvathi et al., 2006). For colony hybridization, the 537-bp PCR product of the A. veronii trh gene obtained using trh5 and trh6 primers was labelled with digoxigenin using the 3′ End Labeling Kit (Roche Biochemicals, Germany). Vibrio parahaemolyticus (AQ4037) was used as a positive control. Vibrio vulnificus ATCC 27562 and Vibrio cholerae ATCC 39315 were used as negative controls. The isolates were spot inoculated on T1N1 agar plates and incubated at 37 °C overnight.