Genetic Subtleties

Introduction

Not all strains of the cholera-causing bacteria, Vibrio cholerae, are pathogenic. Researchers now have a method to distinguish between the various strains. The team used specific repetitive dna segments in the genome. They marked short dna fragments of a strain with dyes and compared it with other strains. As each bacterial strain differs in size and pattern of the repeats, it was easy to distinguish them. The study was released in the June issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Source: Down To Earth, August 2009