Sixty Years from the Discovery of Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Some Recollections

Vibrio parahaemolyticus was discovered by Tsunesaburo Fujino after a shirasu food poisoning outbreak in 1950, but at that time the isolate was named Pasteurella parahaemolytica, not Vibrio. Although the isolate resembled Vibrio, some properties did not correspond with those of Vibrio. For example, the curved cell form of the cell was one of the important taxonomical indicators of the genus, but the isolate was straight in form. After 5 years, Iwao Takikawa isolated a similar bacterium from a food poisoning case and found the halophilic property of the isolate. He named the isolate Pseudomonas enteritis. In 1960, due to the progress of taxonomy, various scientific indices were adjusted, and Davis and Parks defined the taxonomical position of the genus Vibrio, and Fujino et al. and Sakazaki et al. reexamined the above isolates and confirmed that those were the same species in the genus Vibrio and proposed the new scientific name Vibrio parahaemolyticus.Last year was the 60th year since the discovery of the bacterium, and the discoverer was the first president of our organization, the Society for Antibacterial and Antifungal Agents, Japan. Some recollections including the correlation between the Kanagawa phenomenon and human pathogenicity, the major pathogenic factor TDH (thermostable direct hemolysin) and its related hemolysin (TRH: TDH related hemolysin) are also summarized.