Cloning and molecular characterization of the beta toxin (phospholipase C) gene of Clostridium haemolyticum

The phospholipase C (PLPC) gene from Clostridium haemolyticum was amplified using the polymerase chain reaction. Primers were selected from a consensus sequence of closely related clostridial PLPC genes and used to amplify an 871-base pair internal segment of the gene. The internal sequence was used to design nested primers that, together with adapter-specific primers, were used to amplify upstream and downstream sequences. The sequences of upstream and downstream segments were aligned with the internal segment to obtain the entire gene sequence. Primers were selected from the aligned sequence, and the entire gene was amplified, and the PCR product was inserted by ligatation into the pCR 2.1 plasmid. An open reading frame that encodes a 399-amino acid protein, containing a 27-amino acid signal sequence, was identified (GenBank Accession Number AF525415). The molecular weight of the active protein was 42869 Da. A 16-amino acid N-terminal sequence, determined by Edman degradation, exactly matched the putative amino acid sequence of the gene product. Together, N-terminal peptide sequencing and tryptic digestion followed by MALDI-ToF mass spectroscopy verified 48% of the amino acid sequences of the active beta toxin. Comparison of the nucleotide and amino acid sequences with Gene-bank databases demonstrated that the beta toxin of C. haemolyticum exhibits high homology with other bacterial PLPCs. The N-terminal portion of the beta toxin contains zinc-binding residues common to clostridial and other bacterial PLPCs, and it shows 34% homology to the N-terminal domain of bovine arachidonate 5-lipoxygenase. The C-terminal domain of the beta toxin protein shows considerable homology with the C-terminal domains of C. novyi type A PLPC, C. perfringens alpha toxin, C. bifermentens PLPC, although the percent identity between the N-terminal regions is much higher overall than that in the C-terminal domain.