Abstract
Development of microbial source tracking (MST) is crucial to ensure public health and bacteriological safety in coastal areas. In this study, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) , utilized for pollution source tracking of hospital infections, was applied to the aquatic environment as a MST method. Enterococcus faecium and Entecococcus faecalis, fecal indicator bacterias, were isolated and identified from a port area, and the genotype was analyzed by PFGE. A total of 230 enterococcal strains were isolated by PFGE, and forty strains were identified as E. faecium using both PCR and the Api 20 Strep test. Dendrogram analysis of the PFGE types revealed that all the 40 E. faecium strains can be classified separately into 7 different groups at a 0.7 similarity level. The genotypic characterization of E. faecium from the coastal port area revealed diverse types. It is suggested that PFGE can be used to differentiate and characterize fecal pollution indicating bacteria by applying it to the aquatic environment, as well as provide detailed information to specify the pollution source.
