Genetic Diversity of Arcobacter Species of Animal and Human Origin in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Arcobacter is an emerging foodborne pathogen having zoonotic significance. Enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) PCR and repetitive sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) analysis of a total of 41 Arcobacter isolates revealed a greater degree of genetic diversity. ERIC-PCR genotyping distinguished 14, 13 and 12 genotypes among 16, 13 and 12 isolates of A. butzleri, A. cryaerophilus and A. skirrowii, respectively. Rep-PCR genotyping distinguished 15, 12 and 11 genotypes among 16, 13 and 12 isolates of A. butzleri, A. cryaerophilus and A. skirrowii, respectively. The discriminatory power for ERIC and rep-PCR was found to be 0.997 and 0.996, respectively. Close clustering between isolates of animal and human origin are indicative of probable zoonotic significance.