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J. Bacteriol. doi:10.1128/JB.01808-07
Copyright (c) 2008, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Molecular phylogenetics of Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains by Multilocus Sequence Typing

Department of Food Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh; Instituto de Acuicultura, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Campus Universitario Sur, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Laboratorio de Biotecnología, Instituto de Nutrición y Tecnología de los Alimentos, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, Food and Drug Administration, Dauphin Island, Center for Food and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration, College Park, MD USA

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: narjol{at}gmail.com.

	Abstract

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 sequence typing (MLST) scheme for V. parahaemolyticus based on the internal fragment sequences of seven house keeping (HK) genes. This MLST scheme was applied to 100 V. parahaemolyticus strains isolated from geographically diverse clinical (37) and environmental (63) sources. The sequences obtained from this work were deposited and are available in a public database (http://pubmlst.org/vparahaemolyticus). Sixty two unique sequence types (ST) were identified and most (50) were represented by a single isolate, suggesting a high level of genetic diversity. Three major clonal complexes were identified by eBURST analysis. Separate clonal complexes were observed for V. parahaemolyticus isolates originating from the Pacific and Gulf Coast of the United States while a third clonal complex consisted of strains belonging to the pandemic clonal complex with worldwide distribution. The data reported in this study indicates that V. parahaemolyticus is genetically diverse with a semi-clonal population structure and an epidemic structure similar to that of V. cholerae. Genetic diversity in V. parahaemolyticus appears to be driven primarily by frequent recombination rather than mutation, with recombination ratios estimated at 2.5:1 and 8.8:1 by allele and site, respectively. Application of this MLST scheme to more V. parahaemolyticus strains and by different laboratories will facilitate production of a global picture of the epidemiology and evolution of this pathogen.