Identification and characterization of carnobacteria isolated from fish intestine

Eleven bacterial strains were isolated from the gastrointestinal tract of f our fish species, Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.), Arctic chart (Salvelinu s alpinus L.), Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua L.) and wolffish (Anarhichas hipu s L.). All the strains were Gram-positive rods, non-sporing, catalase and o xidase-negative, able to grow at pH 9.0 but not on acetate containing media (pH: 5.4), and were fermentative. They had a high content of oleic acid (1 8:1 n-9) in cellular lipid, and were found to belong to the genus Carnobact erium by phenotypic criteria. The eleven carnobacteria strains were further identified on the basis of 16S rDNA sequence analysis and AFLPT (TM) finge rprinting.