Submission of nucleotide sequence clostridium perfringens pyruvate-flavodoxin oxi-reductase to genbank database

Authors: Lillehoj, Hyun; Panebra, Alfredo

Submitted to: Genbank
Publication Type: Other
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/7/2017
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Clostridium perfringens (CP) is ubiquitous in the nature, and a normal inhabitant in the intestinal tracts of animals and humans. However, pathogenic CP is also a causative agent of poultry disease necrotic enteritis (NE). Clostridium-related poultry diseases such as necrotic enteritis (NE) and gangrenous dermatitis (GD) cause substantial economic losses on a global scale. Identification of alternative disease control strategies have been hindered by the difficulty of experimentally reproducing NE by C. perfringens infection alone. A variety of predisposing factors, such as diets containing wheat and barley, poorly digestible protein, and coccidial co-infection, are required for C. perfringens to multiply and infect poultry. While vaccination offers an attractive approach to antimicrobials for control of NE, there is currently no effective NE vaccine commercially available for broiler chickens. Similar to other toxigenic bacterial pathogens, C. perfringens toxins have been considered as possible vaccine candidates. We recently identified and cloned two non-toxin C. perfringens proteins, pyruvate: ferredoxin oxidoreductase (PFO) and elongation factor Tu (EF-Tu), that were highly immunogenic in chickens [13]. PFO, or pyruvate synthase is a metabolic enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of pyruvate to acetyl-CoA [14], and EF-Tu is a component ofthe prokaryotic mRNA translation apparatus that delivers aminoacyl-tRNAs to the ribosome during the elongation cycle of protein synthesis. These virulence factors, C. perfringens alpha-toxin, NetB toxin, PFO, and EF-Tu proteins are promising as vaccine in an experimental model of NE in chickens.