RESUMEN
A 1.74 kb HindIII fragment from a Vibrio cholerae eltor library of genes was found to be strictly specific for Vibrio cholerae strains independent of the biotypes, serotypes and 01-agglutination ability. The fragment was cloned in pUC19 vector plasmid. The resultant recombinant plasmid pES78VCS was transformed into Escherichia coli strain HB101 resulting in construction of strain KM57. The sites for HincII and XhoI were plotted on a restriction map of the cloned fragment. Two HindIII-XhoI as well as one HincII-XhoI fragments appeared to be of the same specificity as the intact HindIII-HindIII one. The probe identifies 10(6) bacterial cells or 60 ng of purified chromosomal DNA of Vibrio cholerae and may be used for identification of 01 and non-01 strains.