Recombination and insertion events involving the botulinum neurotoxin complex genes in Clostridium botulinum types A, B,
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BioMed Central
Open Access
Research article
Recombination and insertion events involving the botulinum neurotoxin complex genes in Clostridium botulinum types A, B, E and F and Clostridium butyricum type E strains Karen K Hill*1, Gary Xie2, Brian T Foley3, Theresa J Smith4, Amy C Munk2, David Bruce2, Leonard A Smith4, Thomas S Brettin2 and John C Detter2 Address: 1Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos NM 87545, USA, 2DOE Joint Genome Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos NM 87545, USA, 3Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos NM 87545, USA and 4Integrated Toxicology Division, United States Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, MD 21702, USA Email: Karen K Hill* - [email protected]; Gary Xie - [email protected]; Brian T Foley - [email protected]; Theresa J Smith - [email protected]; Amy C Munk - [email protected]; David Bruce - [email protected]; Leonard A Smith - [email protected]; Thomas S Brettin - [email protected]; John C Detter - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 5 October 2009 BMC Biology 2009, 7:66
doi:10.1186/1741-7007-7-66
Received: 10 September 2009 Accepted: 5 October 2009
This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/7/66 © 2009 Hill et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Clostridium botulinum is a taxonomic designation for at least four diverse species that are defined by the expression of one (monovalent) or two (bivalent) of seven different C. botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs, A-G). The four species have been classified as C. botulinum Groups I-IV. The presence of bont genes in strains representing the different Groups is probably the result of horizontal transfer of the toxin operons between the species. Results: Chromosome and plasmid sequences of several C. botulinum strains representing A, B, E and F serotypes and a C. butyricum type E strain were compared to examine their genomic organization, or synteny, and the location of the botulinum toxin complex genes. These comparisons identified synteny among proteolytic (Group I) strains or nonproteolytic (Group II) strains but not between the two Groups. The bont complex genes within the strains examined were not randomly located but found within three regions of the chromosome or in two specific sites within plasmids. A comparison of sequences from a Bf strain revealed homology to the plasmid pCLJ with similar locations for the bont/bv b genes but with the bont/a4 gene replaced by the bont/f gene. An analysis of the toxin cluster genes showed that many recombination events have occurred, including several events within the ntnh gene. One such recombination event resulted in the integration of the bont/a1 gene into th
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