ABSTRACT
Bacteria of the Bacillus cereus group are known to cause food poisoning. A rare phylogenetically remote strain, NVH391-98, was recently characterized to encode a particularly efficient cytotoxin K presumably responsible for food poisoning. This pathogenic strain and its close relatives can be phenotypically distinguished from other strains of the B. cereus group by the inability to grow at temperatures below 17°C and by the ability to grow at temperatures from 48 to 53°C. A temperate phage, phBC391A2, residing in the genome of NVH391-98 allows us to distinguish the three known members of this thermophilic strain cluster.
FOOTNOTES
- Received 2 October 2007.
- Accepted 10 December 2007.
↵▿ Published ahead of print on 21 December 2007.
↵† Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://aem.asm.org/.
- American Society for Microbiology
