| Summary: | <i>Aeromonas salmonicida</i> is the causative agent of septicemia in fish, and it is associated with significant economic losses in the aquaculture industry. While piscine <i>Aeromonas</i> infections are mainly treated with antibiotics, the emergence of resistance in bacterial populations requires the development of alternative methods of treatment. The use of phages can be one of them. A novel <i>A. salmonicida</i> jumbo phage, AerS_266, was isolated and characterized. This phage infects only mesophilic <i>A. salmonicida</i> strains and demonstrates a slow lytic life cycle. Its genome contains 243,674 bp and 253 putative genes: 84 encode proteins with predicted functions, and 3 correspond to tRNAs. Genes encoding two multisubunit RNA polymerases, chimallin and PhuZ, were identified, and AerS_266 was thus defined as a phiKZ-like phage. While similar phages with genomes >200 kb specific to <i>Aeromonas hydrophila</i> and <i>Aeromonas veronii</i> have been previously described, AerS_266 is the first phiKZ-like phage found to infect <i>A. salmonicida</i>.
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