Genome Sequence of a Canadian Vibrio parahaemolyticus Isolate with Unique Mobilizing Capacity Audrey Bioteau, a Kévin Huguet, a Vincent Burrus, a Swapan Banerjee b a Département de Biologie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada b Bureau of Microbial Hazards, Health Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada ABSTRACT Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a clinically significant marine bacterium impli- cated in gastroenteritis among consumers of raw or undercooked seafood. This re- port presents the whole-genome sequence of a unique strain of V. parahaemolyticus isolated from oysters harvested in Canada. V ibrio parahaemolyticus is autochthonous in estuarine environments around the world and is detected in seafood from contaminated harvest sites. Since the 1950s, V. parahaemolyticus has been frequently implicated in cases of seafood-borne gastro- enteritis and other related illnesses (1, 2). Most of the clinical isolates are known to express thermostable direct hemolysin (TDH) and/or TDH-related hemolysin (TRH), encoded by tdh and trh, respectively (1, 3, 4). However, clinical isolates lacking both tdh and trh, as confirmed by PCR, have been detected from several regions, including in recent years from Canada (5) and from the United States (6). The diversity and dynamics of V. parahaemolyticus strains testify to the adaptability of the species to a wide range of habitat and/or environmental challenges by virtue of its genome plasticity and resultant evolution (7). Changes can also occur via the processes of integration and/or conjugation of genetic material through horizontal transfer (8). These events can lead to the emergence of new pathogenic strains as well as evolution of the existing pathogens (7, 9). Knowledge of the global distribution and epidemiology of V. parahaemolyticus, including its genomic profile, will help understand its impact on the human host and the marine environment. Here, we report the genomic sequence of an environmental V. parahaemolyticus isolate from oysters harvested in Canada in the summer of 2005 and sourced to Ladysmith Harbor, British Columbia, Canada. V. parahaemolyticus strain S107-1 was isolated and characterized at the Health Canada laboratory by an in-house procedure, the details of which have been published elsewhere (10). An antimicrobial resistance profile (AMR) of the isolate was determined by Kirby-Bauer’s disk diffusion method (11, 12). Whole-genome sequencing of V. parahaemolyticus S107-1 containing ICEVpaCan1 was carried out from genomic DNA extracted from 2 ml of exponential-phase culture using the Gentra Puregene kit (Qiagen). PacBio RS II single-molecule real-time sequencing (PacBio SMRTcell) and de novo genome assembly were performed at the McGill University and Génome Québec Innovation Centre with the HGAP version 3 method. Annotation data for V. parahae- molyticus S107-1 were provided by the NCBI Prokaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline (13). Biochemical analysis using API20E diagnostic strips confirmed the isolate (S107-1) to be V. parahaemolyticus, which also tested positive by PCR for the presence of the species-specific marker, thermolabile hemolysin gene (tlh), while the known virulence markers (tdh and trh) for V. parahaemolyticus tested negative by PCR. This isolate was resistant to three antibiotics, ampicillin, streptomycin, and cephalothin, and showed intermediate resistance to piperacillin and kanamycin. Whole-genome sequencing Received 7 May 2018 Accepted 8 May 2018 Published 14 June 2018 Citation Bioteau A, Huguet K, Burrus V, Banerjee S. 2018. Genome sequence of a Canadian Vibrio parahaemolyticus isolate with unique mobilizing capacity. Genome Announc 6:e00520-18. https://doi.org/10.1128/genomeA .00520-18. © Crown copyright 2018. This is an open- access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Address correspondence to Swapan Banerjee, swapan.banerjee@canada.ca. PROKARYOTES crossm Volume 6 Issue 24 e00520-18 genomea.asm.org 1