Phage conversion of exfoliative toxin A in Staphylococcus aureus isolated from cows with mastitis.

An exfoliative toxin produced by Staphylococcus aureus is the causative agent of staphylococcal scalded-skin syndrome (SSSS) in young children. Recently, we reported that only few isolates of S. aureus from bovine mastitis contained the eta gene encoding exfoliative toxin A (ETA) and produced ETA in vitro.

Effect of amino acid substitutions in the epitope regions of pyolysin from Arcanobacterium pyogenes.

Pyolysin (PLO), secreted by Arcanobacterium pyogenes, is a novel member of the thiol-activated cytolysin (TACY, cholesterol-dependent cytolysin) family of bacterial toxins. Recently, we demonstrated that the epitopes of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) S, H, C, and G lie in the regions of amino acids regions 55-73, 123-166, 482-506, and 482-506 of PLO, respectively, by the reaction of mAbs with truncated PLOs. In this study, we substituted the amino acids in these epitope regions of PLO by site-directed mutagenesis and examined the effect of these amino acid substitutions.

Structural gene and strain specificity of a novel cysteine protease produced by Staphylococcus aureus isolated from a diseased chicken.

Recently whole genome sequencing of Staphylococcus aureus has revealed the genes encoding cysteine proteases such as staphopain and SspB. In this study, we cloned and sequenced the structural gene (ScpA) encoding a cysteine (thiol) protease of S. aureus strain CH-91 from a chicken with dermatitis using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and inverse PCR methods.