Genetic diversity of Escherichia coli isolated from ice cube production sites

OBJECTIVE: The prevalence of Escherichia coli including from ice cubes in Indonesia is quite high. Unfortunately, little is known about the genetic diversity of E. coli from ice cube production site. Genotypic variation in E. coli populations is a major barrier to control public health risk associated with foodborne pathogen. The aims of this study were to analyze the genotypic diversity of E. coli strains isolated from various samples in order to determine the genetic relationship between those strains. This study is also important to understand the occurrence, prevalence and profile picture of different pathogenic E. coli in various sources which potentially cause disease. RESULTS: Enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) and repetitive extragenic palindromic polymerase chain reaction (REP-PCR) dendrogram showed high genetic diversity of 120 E. coli isolates in majority of sampling sites. DNA fingerprint patterns showed 26 and 21 clusters with 11 and 3 fingerprints individual lineages for ERIC and REP-PCR respectively. There was no correlation observed between phylogenetic relationship and virulence genes. The result indicated a variation of E. coli isolates in ice cube manufacturers. ERIC-PCR method is more discriminative compared with REP-PCR to analyze the genetic diversity of E. coli from ice cubes production sites.