Isolation and genetic characterization of a novel filamentous bacteriophage, a deleted form of phage f237, from a pandemic Vibrio parahaemolyticus O4:K68 strain

We isolated a filamentous bacteriophage, VfO4K68, from the pandemic Vibrio parahaemolyticus strain belonging to O4:K68 serovar. The VfO4K68 DNA lacked a 1,893-bp fragment present in that of the distinctive region of f237, a filamentous phage isolated from a pandemic O3:K6 strain (Nasu, H. et al., J. Clin. Microbiol., 38, 2156-2161, 2000). The deletion resulted in the formation of a novel open reading frame (ORF) that possesses homology to the ORF 27 of ETA phage and staphylococcal enterotoxin E (SEE) of Staphylococcus aureus. VfO4K68 was able to infect the recipient O3:K6 serovar strains. These results suggest that VfO4K68 might act as a genetic transmitter and play some roles in the pandemic V. parahaemolyticus infection.