Clostridium difficile is the causative agent of the majority of antibiotic associated diarrheas. C.
difficile spores are recognized as the morphotype of transmission, infection and persistence.
However, there is a lack of knowledge on how C. difficile spores interact with the host’s
epithelial surfaces. In this context, we have characterized...
High hydrostatic pressure (HHP) is the most-widely adopted novel non-thermal technology for the commercial pasteurization of foods. However, HHP-induced inactivation of bacterial spores remains a challenge due their resistance to the treatment limits of currently available industrial HHP units (i.e., ~650 MPa and 50°C). Several reports have demonstrated that high...
CodY is known to regulate various virulence properties in several Gram-positive bacteria but has not yet been studied in the important histotoxic and intestinal pathogen Clostridium perfringens. The present study prepared an isogenic codY-null mutant in C. perfringens type D strain CN3718 by insertional mutagenesis using the Targetron system. Western...
Sporulation is an important strategy for certain bacterial species within the phylum Firmicutes to survive longer periods of time in adverse conditions. All spore-forming bacteria have two phases in their life; the vegetative form, where they can maintain all metabolic activities and replicate to increase numbers, and the spore form,...
Background: Clostridium difficile is the main cause of nosocomial infections including antibiotic associated diarrhea, pseudomembranous colitis and toxic megacolon. During the course of Clostridium difficile infections (CDI), C. difficile undergoes sporulation and releases spores to the colonic environment. The elevated relapse rates of CDI suggest that C. difficile spores has...
Clostridium perfringens type A is a common source of foodborne illness (FBI) in humans. Vegetative cells sporulate in the small intestinal tract and produce the major pathogenic factor C. perfringens enterotoxin. Although sporulation plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of FBI, the mechanisms inducing sporulation remain unclear. Bile salts...
The increased severity of Clostridium difficile infection is primarily attributed to the appearance of an epidemic strain characterized as PCR ribotype 027. The only report that identified epidemic C. difficile ribotype 027 in an American country outside of North America comes from Costa Rica, raising the possibility that strains 027...
Clostridium difficile is an important nosocomial pathogen that has become a major cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea.
There is a general consensus that C. difficile spores play an important role in C. difficile pathogenesis, contributing to infection,
persistence, and transmission. Evidence has demonstrated that C. difficile spores have an outermost layer,...
Clostridium perfringens type A is a common source of food poisoning (FP) and non-food-borne (NFB) gastrointestinal diseases in humans. In the intestinal tract, the vegetative cells sporulate and produce a major pathogenic factor, C. perfringens enterotoxin (CPE). Most type A FP isolates carry a chromosomal cpe gene, whereas NFB type...
Temporal variations in surface ground temperature impart a signal to the subsurface thermal regime that is captured in borehole temperature-depth profiles. Seventy temperature-depth profiles in India, located between 12° and 28°N, are analyzed to infer past changes in ground temperature. These profiles exhibit predominantly positive anomalous temperatures relative to the...