Isolation of immunogenic and lethal peptides of alpha-toxin from Clostridium novyi type B.
The lethal alpha-toxin was isolated from the culture filtrate of Clostridium novyi type B using ammonium sulfate precipitation and ion exchange chromatography. The alpha-toxin has a mol. wt of 190,000 and does not contain any disulfide cross-linkages. It consists of a single polypeptide chain. The peptide fragments resulting from the cyanogen-bromide cleavage were isolated using reversed phase and gel filtration HPLC. The immunogenic actions of these peptides and peptide mixtures were studied in Balb/c mice. Three polyclonal antisera recognizing the uncleaved native toxin could be found using an ELISA test ( Br3, Bro2, Bro5). One peptide mixture (Tx5), which was proved lethal in shell-less quail eggs (in vitro), was rechromatographed with gel filtration HPLC that resulted in one peptide with mol. wt 3000 (Txleth), which again proved lethal in the shell-less quail egg lethality test. The immunogenic peptides differ from the lethal one, therefore we assumed different locations on the polypeptide chain. The separation of the immunogenic, non-toxic fragment from the lethal one may allow the production of a highly specific non-toxic vaccine. By using synthetically produced immunogenic peptides, time-consuming purification methods and working with the whole toxin will become unnecessary.[1]References
- Isolation of immunogenic and lethal peptides of alpha-toxin from Clostridium novyi type B. Schranner, I., Erhard, M.H., Kaltner, H., Lösch, U. Toxicon (1992) [Pubmed]
 
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