Periodontitis is an inflammatory condition that destroys the tooth-supporting tissues, as a result of local bacterial infection. Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans is a Gram-negative facultative anaerobic species, highly associated with aggressive periodontitis. Periodontal inflammation is dominated by cytokines of the Interleukin (IL)-1 family. Prior to their secretion by mononuclear cells,...

OBJECTIVE To screen a collection of isolates of Haemophilus ducreyi for expression of the cytolethal distending toxin (CDT). METHODS 45 clinical isolates of H ducreyi were screened for cytotoxic activity by examining the effect of culture supernatants on Hela cells. Expression was confirmed using immunoblotting with CDT specific monoclonal antibodies and the presence of the cdt genes determin...

BACKGROUND For many putative Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica virulence genes, functional characterization across serovars has been limited. Cytolethal distending toxin B (CdtB) is an incompletely characterized virulence factor that is found not only in Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhi (Salmonella Typhi) and dozens of Gram negative bacterial pathogens, but also in non-typhoi...

Salmonella Typhi, an exclusive human pathogen and the cause of typhoid fever, expresses a functional cytolethal distending toxin for which only the active subunit, CdtB, has been identified. Here, we show that PltA and PltB, which are encoded in the same pathogenicity islet as cdtB, associate with CdtB to form a multipartite toxin. PltA and PltB are homologs of components of the pertussis toxin...