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Concept
Clostridium botulinum
Summary
Clostridium botulinum is a Gram-positive, rod-shaped, anaerobic, spore-forming, motile bacterium with the ability to produce the neurotoxin botulinum.
The botulinum toxin can cause botulism, a severe flaccid paralytic disease in humans and other animals, and is the most potent toxin known to mankind, natural or synthetic, with a lethal dose of 1.3–2.1 ng/kg in humans.
C. botulinum is a diverse group of pathogenic bacteria initially grouped together by their ability to produce botulinum toxin and now known as four distinct groups, C. botulinum groups I–IV, as well as some strains of Clostridium butyricum and Clostridium baratii, are the bacteria responsible for producing botulinum toxin.
C. botulinum is responsible for foodborne botulism (ingestion of preformed toxin), infant botulism (intestinal infection with toxin-forming C. botulinum), and wound botulism (infection of a wound with C. botulinum). C. botulinum produces heat-resistant endospores that are commonly found in soil and are able to survive under adverse conditions.
C. botulinum is commonly associated with bulging canned food; bulging, misshapen cans can be due to an internal increase in pressure caused by gas produced by bacteria.
C. botulinum is a Gram-positive, rod-shaped, spore-forming bacterium. It is an obligate anaerobe, meaning that oxygen is poisonous to the cells. However, C. botulinum tolerates traces of oxygen due to the enzyme superoxide dismutase, which is an important antioxidant defense in nearly all cells exposed to oxygen. C. botulinum is able to produce the neurotoxin only during sporulation, which can happen only in an anaerobic environment.
C. botulinum is divided into four distinct phenotypic groups (I-IV) and is also classified into seven serotypes (A–G) based on the antigenicity of the botulinum toxin produced.
Physiological differences and genome sequencing at 16S rRNA level support the subdivision of the C. botulinum species into groups I-IV.
One of the fundamental differences between group I and group II is that C.
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