Vibrio parahaemolyticus is an important human pathogen whose transmission is associated with the consumption of contaminated seafood. There is a growing public health concern due to the emergence of a pandemic strain causing severe outbreaks worldwide. Many questions remain unanswered regarding the evolution and population structure of V. parahaemolyticus. In this work, we describe a multilocus...

BACKGROUND AphA is the master quorum-sensing (QS) regulator operating at low cell density in vibrios. Molecular regulation of target genes by AphA has been characterized in Vibrio harveyi and V. cholerae, but it is still poorly understood in V. parahaemolyticus. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The AphA proteins are extremely conserved in V. parahaemolyticus, Vibrio sp. Ex25, Vibrio sp. EJY3, V...

BACKGROUND Vibrio parahaemolyticus is an important human pathogen which can cause gastroenteritis when consumed in raw or partially-cooked seafood. The pathogenesis of V. parahaemolyticus is based on the presence of virulence factors: the thermostable direct hemolysin (TDH) and TDH-related hemolysin (TRH), encoded by the tdh and trh genes, respectively. OBJECTIVES The present study aimed to e...

UNLABELLED Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a globally disseminated Gram-negative marine bacterium and the leading cause of seafood-borne acute gastroenteritis. Pathogenic bacterial isolates encode two type III secretion systems (T3SS), with the second system (T3SS2) considered the main virulence factor in mammalian hosts. For many decades, V. parahaemolyticus has been studied as an exclusively extra...

This study describes the optimization of PCR parameters and testing of a wide number of microbial species to establish a highly specific and sensitive PCR-based method of detection of a newly emerged pandemic Vibrio parahaemolyticus O3:K6 strain in pure cultures and seeded waters from the Gulf of Mexico (gulf water). The selected open reading frame 8 (ORF8) DNA-specific oligonucleotide primers ...

Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio vulnificus are the major pathogenic Vibrio species which contaminate ready-to-eat seafood. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the risk of human illness resulting from consumption of ready-to-eat seafood such as sashimi and raw oyster meat due to the presence of V. parahaemolyticus and V. vulnificus. We compared the growth kinetics of V. parahaemolyticus...

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the leading worldwide cause of seafood-associated gastroenteritis, yet little is known regarding its intraintestinal gene expression or physiology. To date, in vivo analyses have focused on identification and characterization of virulence factors--e.g. a crucial Type III secretion system (T3SS2)--rather than genome-wide analyses of in vivo biology. Here, we used RNA-S...

The aim of the present study was to use three PCR-based techniques for the analysis of genetic variability among Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains isolated from the Philippines. Seventeen strains of V. parahaemolyticus isolated from shrimps and from the environments where these shrimps are being cultivated were analyzed by RAPD, ERIC and REP-PCR. Antimicrobial susceptibility of these strains to s...

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a leading cause of foodborne infections in China and a threat to human health worldwide. The main objective of this study is to determine the prevalence and characteristic of V. parahaemolyticus isolates in fish, oyster and shrimp samples from the South China domestic consumer market. To accomplish this, we examined 504 seafood samples from 11 provinces of China. The ...

Mice were immunized by injection of Vibrio parahaemolyticus ATCC 17802 polar flagellin in order to produce monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). mAbs were analyzed by anti-H enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay using V. parahaemolyticus polar flagellar cores. The mAb exhibiting the highest anti-H titer was coated onto Cowan I Staphylococcus aureus cells at a concentration of 75 microg/ml cell suspension a...