Full Length Research Paper

Identification and phylogenetic analysis of a bacterium isolated from the cloaca of Chinese alligator

Rongrong Ma¹, Xiaobing Wu¹*, Renping Wang², Chaolin Wang² and Jialong Zhu²

¹College of Life Sciences, Anhui Provincial Key Lab. of the Conservation and Exploitation of Biological Resources, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, P. R. China.

²Anhui Research Center for Reproduction of Chinese alligator, Xuancheng, 242000, China.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: wuxb@mail.ahnu.edu.cn. Tel/Fax: +86-553-3836873.

Accepted 5 June, 2008

Wild populations of Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis) are on the edge of extinction. Through a release project lunched by the State Forestry Administration (SFA) of China, some captive-bred alligators will be selected and released into the wild to supplement and renew natural populations. Before releasing, health screening protocols on individuals are very necessary. In this paper, bacterium ASC10 was isolated from the cloaca of Chinese alligators during heath screening. According to the traditional bacteriology approach, the strain ASC10 displayed the characteristics of Enterobacteriaceae, and partial similarity of Proteus vulgaris. In order to confirm the further phylogenetic status of this strain, 16S rRNA gene sequences was used and aligned with related bacterial strains. According to the analysis based on the phenotypes and 16S rRNA gene sequences, strain ASC10 shows a close relative relationship with Genus Proteus and it has a far relationship with other genera of Enterobacteriaceae. In terms of results, it is confirmed that strain ASC10 belongs to a new species of Genus Proteus.

Key words: Chinese alligator, 16S rRNA gene, bacterium, phylogenetic analysis.