Molecular screening of Clostridium difficile toxins A and B genetic determinants and identification of mutant strains

1 February 1991

journal article
Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in FEMS Microbiology Letters

Vol. 78 (1) , 75-80
https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-1097(91)90258-c

Abstract

Three separate sets of polymerase chain reaction primers were designed to specifically detect the presence of a toxin A gene fragment, a toxin B gene fragment, and the entire toxin B gene. In addition toxin gene fragments that were amplified from well characterized toxic strains were tagged fluorescently and used as hybridization probes to screen C. difficile strains. A survey of 37 toxic strains and 10 non-toxic strains demonstrated that toxic strains normally contain the genetic composition for toxin A and toxin B simultaneously; whereas, non-toxin strains typically did not contain detectable toxin determinants. The only exception found was strain 39, which had the genetic composition for toxins A and B, but was not cytotoxic under the conditions tested.

Keywords

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