Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a common food-borne pathogen that is normally associated with seafood. In 1996, a pandemic O3:K6 strain abruptly appeared and caused the first pandemic of this pathogen to spread throughout many Asian countries, America, Europe, and Africa. The role of temperate bacteriophages in the evolution of this pathogen is of great interest. In this work, a new temperate phage, VP882, from a pandemic O3:K6 strain of V. parahaemolyticus was purified and characterized after mitomycin C induction. VP882 was a Myoviridae bacteriophage with a polyhedral head and a long rigid tail with a sheath-like structure. It infected and lysed high proportions of V. parahaemolyticus, Vibrio vulnificus, and Vibrio cholerae strains. The genome of phage VP882 was sequenced and was 38,197 bp long, and 71 putative open reading frames were identified, of which 27 were putative functional phage or bacterial genes. VP882 had a linear plasmid-like genome with a putative protelomerase gene and cohesive ends. The genome does not integrate into the host chromosome but was maintained as a plasmid in the lysogen. Analysis of the reaction sites of the protelomerases in different plasmid-like phages revealed that VP882 and ⌽HAP-1 were highly similar, while N15, ⌽KO2, and PY54 made up another closely related group. The presence of DNA adenine methylase and quorum-sensing transcriptional regulators in VP882 may play a specific role in this phage or regulate physiological or virulence-associated traits of the hosts. These genes may also be remnants from the bacterial chromosome following transduction.Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a common gram-negative foodborne enteropathogenic bacterium in Taiwan, Japan, and other Asian Pacific countries. The high incidence of this pathogen is undoubtedly the result of the frequent consumption of raw seafood in these countries. Clinical symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, headache, fever, and chills, and incubation periods range from 4 to 96 h (26). Most clinical isolates are hemolytic on Wagatsuma agar (Kanagawa phenomenon positive) and produce a thermostable direct hemolysin, which is one of the main virulence factors in this pathogen (51).Since 1996, gastroenteritis that is caused by particular O3:K6 strains (designated as pandemic O3:K6) of V. parahaemolyticus has been widespread in Southeast and East Asia (55), North America (27), South America (20), Europe (34), and Africa (3). It has been regarded as the first pandemic of this pathogen (43). These widespread pandemic O3:K6 strains have been found to be genetically closely related based on various molecular methods and appear to constitute a clone that differs markedly from the nonpandemic O3:K6 strains that were isolated before 1996 (4, 43, 55). The acquisition of the traits associated with these strains that account for the pandemic is of great concern.In pandemic Vibrio cholerae, virulence factors are encoded in the genome of an integrated filamentous phage, CTX⌽ (53). The integration of the filamentous phage CTX⌽...
