Septic arthritis is a common and feared complication of staphylococcal infections. Staphylococcus aureus produces a number of potential virulence factors including certain adhesins and enterotoxins. In this study we have assessed the roles of cytolytic toxins in the development of septic arthritis by inoculating mice with S. aureus wild-type strain 8325-4 or isogenic mutants differing in the ex...

Cholera toxin is associated with caveolae and raft domains in various cell types and previous studies have shown that cholera toxin can be internalized by caveolae/raft-dependent endocytosis as well as by other pathways. We undertook the study of cholera toxin endocytosis in CaCo-2 and HeLa cells. CaCo-2 cells do not express detectable levels of caveolin and, relative to HeLa cells, also presen...

Photoreactive derivatives of alpha- and beta-scorpion toxins have been used to analyze the subunit composition of Na+ channels in rat brain. In synaptosomes, both types of toxins preferentially labeled (greater than 85%) a component of 34,000 Da and, at a lower level, another component of 300,000 Da. Reduction of disulfide bridges shifted this latter band from 300,000 Da to 272,000 Da but did n...

background and objectives: clostridium perfringens is more prevalent type of clostridia genus isolated from the intestinal tract of ostrich ( struthio camelus ). necrotic enteritis (ne) is a potentially fatal gastrointestinal (gi) disease of poultry and other avian species, which produces marked destruction of intestinal lining in digestive tract caused by c. perfringens . pathogenicity and les...

Synthetic studies on bioactive compounds are described, involving phytotoxins (tobacco wildfire disease toxin tabtoxinine-beta-lactam and rice blast disease toxin pyricuol) a glutarimide antibiotic (actiketal) black vomit toxin (gizzerosine) and marine products (antifeedant pteroenone and serinol compound didemniserinolipid).

A halotolerant yeast, Pichia farinosa KK1 strain, produces a unique killer toxin termed SMK toxin (salt-mediated killer toxin) which shows its maximum killer activity in the presence of 2 M NaCl. The toxin consists of two distinct subunits, alpha and beta, which are tightly linked without a disulfide bond under acidic conditions, even in the presence of 6 M urea. Under neutral conditions, howev...

Fusion protein technology represents the strategy to achieve rapid, efficient, and cost-effective proteinexpression. Epsilon and Beta toxins are the most potent Clostridial toxins and cause disease in animals.This study describes in silico fusion of Clostridium perfringens types D and B epsilon and beta toxin genesthat was used for cloning in E.coli. The etx and cpb genes were...

Clostridium perfringens type C strains that produce various toxins cause hemorrhagic noxious ulceration or mucousal necrosis of the small intestine in humans, pigs, cattle and chickens (Sakurai et al. 1997, Sakurai and Nagahama 2006). In humans, the bacteria cause necrotic enteritis, which is termed “pig-bel” (Sakurai and Nagahama 2006). C. perfringens has been classified into five types, A to ...

The accumulation of inositol phosphates in WRK 1 cells, stimulated with a range of vasopressin concentrations, was diminished by prior exposure to cholera toxin or forskolin, whilst that observed in the presence of maximal concentrations of the hormone was enhanced in pertussis-toxin-treated cells. In the presence of [32P]NAD+, both cholera toxin and pertussis toxin provoked the labelling of pe...