Abstract

Mariana Carmen Chifiriuc*, Gratiela Pircalabioru, Veronica Laz r, Beatrice Gîlea, Lumini a Dasc lu, Gerard Enache and Coralia Bleotu

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is an estuarine bacterium widely distributed in natural aquatic environments and also a well-known food-borne pathogen, and like other enteropathogenic bacteria, it survives both in its natural environment and in its host. The transition from one state to another requires a high capacity to adapt to different physico-chemical parameters, process which increases the synthesis of specific proteins, including heat-shock proteins (HSPs). In order to investigate the immunogenicity of heat shock proteins from different cellular fractions of V. parahaemolyticus grown under sub-lethal heat and osmotic shock, we analyzed the response of holoxenic mice to V. parahaemolyticus cellular fractions injected intraperitoneally by examining the anti-HSP antibodies response to stressful conditions and the immune protection installed after several immunizations. The supernatant and total cellular extract of heat or simultaneously heat and osmoticallystressed bacterial cultures induced the early occurrence of anti-HSP antibodies (after 4 immunizations), while after 8 immunizations, the anti-HSP antibodies were present in the majority of the tested batches, the most immunogenic fraction proving to be the heat-stressed culture supernatants