Resuscitation of viable but nonculturable cells of Vibrio parahaemolyticusinduced at low temperature under starvation

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is known to exist in a viable but nonculturable sta te when incubated at low temperature under starvation. It has long been deb ated whether the culturable cells which appear after temperature upshift ar e the result of true resuscitation or regrowth of a few residual culturable cells. Starved V. parahaemolyticus cells at 4 degrees C reached the noncul turable stage in about 12 days. The true resuscitation of nonculturable cel ls of V. parahaemolyticus occurred after spreading them onto an agar medium supplemented with H2O2-degrading compounds such as catalase or sodium pyru vate. The proposed method may be applicable to detecting the enteropathogen from environmental samples. (C) 2000 Federation of European Microbiologica l Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.