Vibrios are widely distributed in warm estuarine and coastal environments, and they can infect humans through the consumption of raw and mishandled contaminated seafood or direct contact from swimming in coastal and estuarine waters

The overall goal of this project is to determine the prevalence and distribution of Vibrio species in coastal water and oyster using culture based, PCR and metagenomic approaches. The information generated will help in understanding changes in Vibrio population in respect to environmental factors and advance our knowledge of Vibrio-host interactions.