This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Supplementary material
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowReprints and Permissions
Right arrow Copyright Information
Right arrow Books from ASM Press
Right arrow MicrobeWorld
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Lúquez, C.
Right arrow Articles by Maslanka, S. E.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Lúquez, C.
Right arrow Articles by Maslanka, S. E.
Agricola
Right arrow Articles by Lúquez, C.
Right arrow Articles by Maslanka, S. E.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2009, p. 6094-6101, Vol. 75, No. 19
0099-2240/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01009-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Neurotoxin Gene Clusters in Clostridium botulinum Type Ab Strains{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Carolina Lúquez,* Brian H. Raphael, and Susan E. Maslanka

Enteric Diseases Laboratory Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia

Received 4 May 2009/ Accepted 29 July 2009

There is limited knowledge of the neurotoxin gene diversity among Clostridium botulinum type Ab strains. Only the sequences of the bont/A and bont/B genes in C. botulinum type Ab strain CDC1436 and the sequence of the bont/B gene in C. botulinum type Ab strain CDC588 have been reported. In this study, we sequenced the entire bont/A- and bont/B-associated neurotoxin gene clusters of C. botulinum type Ab strain CDC41370 and the bont/A gene of strain CDC588. In addition, we analyzed the organization of the neurotoxin gene clusters in strains CDC588 and CDC1436. The bont/A nucleotide sequence of strain CDC41370 differed from those of the known bont/A subtypes A1 to A4 by 2 to 7%, and the predicted amino acid sequence differed by 4% to 14%. The bont/B nucleotide sequence in strain CDC41370 showed 99.7% identity to the sequence of subtype B1. The bont/A nucleotide sequence of strain CDC588 was 99.9% identical to that of subtype A1. Although all of the C. botulinum type Ab strains analyzed contained the two sets of neurotoxin clusters, similar to what has been found in other bivalent strains, the intergenic spacing of p21-orfX1 and orfX2-orfX3 varied among these strains. The type Ab strains examined in this study had differences in their toxin gene cluster compositions and bont/A and bont/B nucleotide sequences, suggesting that they may have arisen from separate recombination events.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, MS G-29, Atlanta, GA 30333. Phone: (404) 639-0896. Fax: (404) 639-4290. E-mail: Cluquez{at}cdc.gov

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 14 August 2009.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://aem.asm.org/.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2009, p. 6094-6101, Vol. 75, No. 19
0099-2240/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01009-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology.   For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»