Toxin gene profiling of enterotoxic and emetic Bacillus cereus.

Very different toxins are responsible for the two types of gastrointestinal diseases caused by Bacillus cereus: the diarrhoeal syndrome is linked to nonhemolytic enterotoxin NHE, hemolytic enterotoxin HBL, and cytotoxin K, whereas emesis is caused by the action of the depsipeptide toxin cereulide. The recently identified cereulide synthetase genes permitted development of a molecular assay that targets all toxins known to be involved in food poisoning in a single reaction, using only four different sets of primers. The enterotoxin genes of 49 strains, belonging to different phylogenetic branches of the B.

Differentiation of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato strains using class I lysyl-tRNA synthetase-encoding genes.

The essential protein lysyl-tRNA synthetase (LysRS) exists in two unrelated forms, a class I and a class II-type aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase. Comparative genome sequence analysis revealed that Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, the etiological agent of Lyme disease, contains a class I-type LysRS, whereas its tick and mammalian hosts would be expected to contain a class II-type protein. To investigate the utility of the class I LysRS as a diagnostic target for Lyme disease, the corresponding gene ( lysK) was cloned and sequenced from B.