Sex ratios and gravid characteristics were analysed for the crocodile shark Pseudocarcharias kamoharai from the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. Gravid females ranged from 80 to 102 cm fork length (L(F) ). The mode litter size was four (two embryos per uterus), mean embryo length was linearly correlated with maternal length (r = 0·465, n = 32); there was no significant difference in L(F) between female and male embryos.

No abstract

No abstract

Development of an ERIC sequence typing scheme for Laribacter hongkongensis, an emerging pathogen associated with community-acquired gastroenteritis and travellers' diarrhoea Laribacter hongkongensis is a potential emerging pathogen, associated with community-acquired diarrhoea. For epidemiological purposes, different molecular typing methods, such as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multi-locus sequence typing, have been developed for this pathogen. However, these methods require specialized equipment and costly reagents. More importantly, they are labour-intensive and time-consuming, which is not really suitable for foodborne disease outbreak investigations. In this study, we developed a rapid and reliable method using 22-mer primers specific for the enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence (ERIC INTRODUCTIONLaribacter hongkongensis, a Gram-negative bacterium, constitutes a future health threat to the public as it is a potential emerging foodborne pathogen responsible for human gastroenteritis (Woo et al., 2004;Yuen et al., 2001). Studies have demonstrated that the risk of suffering from L. hongkongensis-associated gastroenteritis was significantly associated with freshwater fish consumption (Woo et al., 2004; Ren et al., 2010). In addition, L. hongkongensis has been found in the intestines of healthy food-producing animals such as freshwater fish and edible frogs, which are widely used as ingredients in Chinese cooking (Feng et al., 2012;Teng et al., 2005;Woo et al., 2004).Since the potentially pathogenic L. hongkongensis is likely to be transmitted through the food chain, molecular epidemiological information is helpful in identifying the agent and transmission routes for foodborne disease outbreaks caused by this bacterium (Woo et al., 2004; Ren et al., 2010). Of the molecular-based methods available, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), which separates by size DNA fragments produced by digestion with restriction enzymes targeting specific nucleotide sequences, has been applied to whole-genome profiling for L. hongkongensis strains (Woo et al., 2003). Another whole-genome genotyping approach, enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC)-PCR, is a PCR-based technique, focusing on primers for repetitive intergenic consensus sequences. It has a possible advantage over PFGE, in that it has offered high discrimination and has been found to be easier to perform, and less costly and Abbreviation: ERIC, enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence.