A stable shuttle vector which replicates in Escherichia coli and Clostridium perfringens was constructed by ligating a 3.6-kilobase (kb) fragment of plasmid pBR322 with C. perfringens plasmid pHB101 (3.1 kb). The marker for this shuttle plasmid originated from the 1.3-kb chloramphenicol resistance gene of plasmid pHR106. The resulting shuttle vector, designated pAK201, is 8 kb in size and codes...

Small plasmids which replicate in both Escherichia coli and Clostridium perfringens were made by recombining E. coli plasmid pBR322 with three different small (less than 4 kilobases) plasmids native to C. perfringens. Subsequently, two homologous, though distinct, tetracycline resistance determinants (tet) from other C. perfringens plasmids were cloned into them. Both tet systems made E. coli r...

Aim The study was conducted to report the occurrence of the Clostridium perfringens in sheep and goats of the Kashmir valley for the 1st time and to characterize them molecularly with respect to toxin genes to determine the prevalence of the various toxinotypes. Materials and Methods A total of 177 samples (152 from sheep and 25 from goats) collected from healthy, diarrheic animals, and morbi...

We investigated an outbreak initially attributed to norovirus; however, Clostridium perfringens toxicoinfection was subsequently confirmed. C. perfringens is an underrecognized but frequently observed cause of food-borne disease outbreaks. This investigation illustrates the importance of considering epidemiologic and laboratory data together when evaluating potential etiologic agents that might...

Antibody against Clostridium perfringens type A enterotoxin was found in 82% of Brazilian and 65% of American serum samples.

Clostridium perfringens is a prolific, toxin-producing anaerobe causing multiple diseases in humans and animals. One of these toxins is epsilon, a 33 kDa protein produced by Clostridium perfringens (types B and D) that induces fatal enteric disease of goats, sheep and cattle. Epsilon toxin (Etx) belongs to the aerolysin-like toxin family. It contains three distinct domains, is proteolytically-a...

NanI Sialidase, CcpA and CodY Work Together to Regulate Epsilon Toxin 1 Production by Clostridium perfringens Type D Strain CN3718 2 3 Jihong Li, John C. Freedman and Bruce A. McClane* 4 Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of Pittsburgh School of 5 Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA 15219 6 7 8 Running title: C. perfringens NanI regulates ETX production 9

We report a clinical case of meningoencephalitis with subdural empyema in an immunocompromised farmer caused by toxigenic Clostridium perfringens type A, which was identified by 16S RNA gene analysis of cerebrospinal fluid and subdural empyema. In immunocompromised patients, C. perfringens should be considered a potential pathogen of sepsis.

The prevalences of various genotypes of enterotoxin gene-carrying (cpe-positive) Clostridium perfringens type A in 24 different food poisoning outbreaks were 75% (chromosomal IS1470-cpe), 21% (plasmid-borne IS1470-like-cpe), and 4% (plasmid-borne IS1151-cpe). These results show that C. perfringens type A carrying the plasmid-borne cpe is a common cause of food poisoning.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Clostridium perfringens, a Gram-positive obligate anaerobic bacterium, is able to form resistant spores which are widely distributed in the environment. C. perfringens is subdivided into five types A to E based on its four major alpha, beta, epsilon and iota toxins. The aim of the present study was cloning and expression of C. perfringens type D vaccine strain epsilon ...