An Atypical Outbreak of Food-Borne Botulism Due to Clostridium botulinum Types B and E from Ham

Cross-immunoreaction between BoNT/E3 and BoNT/E12 as tested by ELISA. A 96-well plate was coated with recombinant Hc (rHc) proteins of BoNT/E3 and BoNT/E12. After a saturation step with bovine serum albumin (BSA), the immunopurified antibodies against anti-rHc/E3 and anti-rHc/E12 were titrated (starting dilution of 1:100 followed by 2-fold serial dilutions). The histogram represents the antibody titers (reciprocal of dilutions) to achieve an optical density (OD) of 0.3. Preimmune rabbit sera and immunopurified antibodies against rHc proteins of BoNT/A1 and BoNT/B2 are included as controls.

Genetic organization of the neurotoxin gene cluster in strain 84-10 and comparison with the most related subtypes. (A) The closest C. botulinum E subtype homologs of the 84-10 neurotoxin gene cluster are indicated (% identity) at the nucleotide and amino acid sequence levels. The accession numbers of the toxin gene cluster sequences of strain 84-10 are KM370319 to KM370324. (B) Location of the neurotoxin gene cluster in the rarA gene within the C. botulinum strain 84-10 and comparison of the flanking genes from strains Eklund 17B (nonproteolytic type B), Alaska E43 (E3), and C. butyricum BL5262 (E5) at the amino acid sequence level (% identity) according to reference 12.