IMMUNOLOGICAL REACTIVITY OF VIBRIO-ANGUILLARUM SERO-SUBGROUPS O2A ANDO2B, AND COMPARISON OF THEIR LIPOPOLYSACCHARIDE PROFILES

One hundred and twenty-nine Vibrio anguillarum serogroup O2 strains we re compared by slide agglutination and Western blotting for their lipo polysaccharide (LPS) structure, The strains showed six different LPS p rofiles, four different reaction patterns in Western blotting, and fou r different kinds of reaction in slide agglutination, when both unabso rbed and absorbed anti-O2a and anti-O2b sera were used. All in all, ni ne different groups were detected when the combination of these three methods was applied. The two serological methods gave corresponding re sults for almost all strains (96%). Most of these strains (84%) belong ed to sere-subgroup O2a, while 12% of the strains belonged to sere-sub group O2b. The remaining six strains had varying reactions in the used serological methods; therefore, their sero-subgroups could not be det ermined. These results suggest the existence of additional sere-subgro ups within serogroup O2.