title: Isolation and genetic characterization of a novel filamentous bacteriophage, a deleted form of phage f237, from a pandemic Vibrio parahaemolyticus O4:K68 strain.
abstract: We isolated a filamentous bacteriophage, VfO4K68, from the pandemic Vibrio parahaemolyticus strain belonging to 04: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 03: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 03:K6 serovar strains. These results suggest that VfO4K68 might act as a genetic transmitter and play some roles in the pandemic V. parahaemolyticus infection.
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D006801:Humans; D017912:Inovirus / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000378:metabolism; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017384:Sequence Deletion; D014735:Vibrio Infections / Q000453:epidemiology; D014736:Vibrio parahaemolyticus / Q000821:virology*