Attempts to reconstruct the evolutionary history of snake toxins in the context of their co-option to the venom gland rarely account for nonvenom snake genes that are paralogous to toxins, and which therefore represent important connectors to ancestral genes. In order to reevaluate this process, we conducted a comparative transcriptomic survey on body tissues from a venomous snake. A nonredunda...

Aflatoxins, which are produced by Aspergillus flavus, are toxic to humans, livestock, and pets. The value of maize (Zea mays) grain is markedly reduced when contaminated with aflatoxin. Plant resistance and biological control using non-toxin producing strains are considered effective strategies for reducing aflatoxin accumulation in maize grain. Distinguishing between the toxin and non-toxin pr...

Delta-toxin produced by Clostridium perfringens types B and C is a β-pore-forming cytotoxin. Here, using site-directed mutagenesis, we identified the amino acid residues that contribute to delta-toxin oligomerization binding. We replaced Lys-43 Ser-109 located in β-sandwich domain Arg-200 rim domain. Substitution of alanine for caused reductions both cytotoxicity oligomerization. However, excha...

background : clostridium perfringens type c strains cause severe necrotizing enteritis in sheep, calves, goats, pigs and humans. beta-toxin is introduced to be the essential virulence factor of this microorganism. in the present study, a new method was established for the purification of beta toxin from culture supernatant fluid of c. perfringens type c vaccinal strain. methods : the four steps...

objective: verotoxin is a member of shiga toxin family. this family contains ab protein toxins with an enzymatic (a) and a binding (b) compartment. cells that have receptor (gb3) are sensitive to cytotoxic effects of toxin. it has been shown that various tumor cells have gb3 receptor and are selectively sensitive to apoptotic effect of verotoxin. studies on tumor cell lines and laboratory anima...

A total of 108 S. aureus isolates from 16 major hospitals located in 14 different provinces in China were characterized for the profiles of 18 staphylococcal enterotoxin (SE) genes, 3 exfoliatin genes (eta, etb and etd), and the toxic shock syndrome toxin gene (tsst) by PCR. The genomic diversity of each isolate was also evaluated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multilocus sequence ...

Cholera, the pandemic diarrheal disease caused by the gram-negative bacterium Vibrio cholerae, continues to be a major public health challenge in the developing world. Cholera toxin, which is responsible for the voluminous stools of cholera, causes constitutive activation of adenylyl cyclase, resulting in the export of ions into the intestinal lumen. Environmental studies have demonstrated a cl...

BACKGROUND α-toxin is one of the major virulence factors secreted by most Staphylococcus aureus strains, which played a central role in the pathogenesis of S. aureus pneumonia. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of capsaicin on the production of α-toxin by community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) strain USA 300 and to further assess its perform...