Bacillus cereus sensu lato species, as well as Staphylococcus aureus, are important pathogenic bacteria which can cause foodborne illness through the production of enterotoxins. This study characterised enterotoxin genes of these species and examined growth and enterotoxin production dynamics of isolates when grown in milk or meat-based broth. All B. cereus s. l. isolates harboured nheA, hblA a...

To date, 21 different staphylococcal enterotoxins have been described (known by letters of the alphabet, A V, although a few letters are missing from the sequence). All are heat stable, water-soluble proteins and retain their activity in the digestive tract after ingestion. Staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA), either alone, or in combination with other staphylococcal enterotoxins, is the one mos...

This study describes a multiplex PCR assay developed for the detection of Staphylococcus aureus enterotoxin types: SEA, SEB, SEC, SED, and SEE presented in the literature as classical. The method was then used to analyse the presence of genes encoding these enterotoxins in .S aureus strains isolated from raw milk. A total of 237 raw milk samples were used in the study and 77 (32.5%) of them wer...

We report the identification and characterization of three Staphylococcus aureus isolates recovered from throat and vaginal cultures, as well as from an axillary abscess, of a 17-year-old female who died of tampon-related toxic shock syndrome. The three S. aureus isolates were unrelated as determined by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. The vaginal isolate was mecA, Panton-Valentine leukocidin,...

The structural gene encoding staphylococcal enterotoxin C1 was cloned into Escherichia coli and localized on a 1.5-kilobase HindIII-ClaI DNA fragment by subcloning. The toxin was partially purified from E. coli clones and shown to be immunologically identical to enterotoxin C1 from Staphylococcus aureus. The cloned toxin also had the same molecular weight (26,000) and charge heterogeneity as st...

The goal of this work was to determine whether staphylococcal enterotoxin type A gene (sea) expression is regulated by an accessory gene regulator (agr). The Tn551 insertionally inactivated agr allele of Staphylococcus aureus ISP546 was transferred to three Sea+ S. aureus strains. Each of the Agr- strains produced as much staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA) as its parent strain. These results su...

The present study was aimed to identify the frequency of coagulase (Coa) and thermonuclease (Nuc) genes and Staphylococcal enterotoxin A (Sea) production among Staphylococcus aureus isolated from various sources in Shiraz. Moreover, the correlation between the Sea gene and coagulase and thermonuclease enzymes is also considered. A total of 100 S. aureus were isolated from various sources includ...

Staphylococcal enterotoxins are a family of structurally related proteins that are produced by Staphylococcus aureus. In addition to their role in the pathogenicity of food poisoning, these microbial superantigens have profound effects on the immune system, which makes them useful tools for understanding its mechanism of action. These molecules (24-30 kDa) are highly hydrophilic and exhibit low...

Coagulase positive staphylococci are generally difficult to grow in foodstuffs without substantial temperature abuse and foodborne outbreaks are uncommon. The following incident resulted in the first detection of staphylococcal enterotoxin in food in a Queensland outbreak and is the first reported outbreak of staphylococcal foodborne illness in Queensland since 1997 when 42 people in a Bundaber...