Abstract
The present study was undertaken to confirm the genetic identity of Clostridium perfringens isolates from domestic livestock in Saudi Arabia and to characterize the genes encoding to alpha, beta, epsilon, and iota (alpha-, beta-, epsilon-, and iota-) toxins. C. perfringens were confirmed in 104 out of 136 isolates on multiplex polymerase chain reaction using specific primers amplifying genes related to toxins produced by C. perfringens. Genes encoding alpha-toxins were detected in 104 samples. Of the isolates, 80.8% were diagnosed as type A, 15.4% as type D, 2.9% as type C, and 0.96% as type B. None of the isolates has genes encoding iota (iota-) toxin. All isolates investigated yielded enterotoxin (cpe) products and none yielded beta 2 (cpb2-toxin) or NetB products. PLC gene sequences encoding alpha-toxin showed >96.7% similarity. Isolates which had alpha-toxins as well as enterotoxin (cpe) are regarded as type F. Phylogenetic analysis using maximum likelihood analysis yielded two clades, and the majority of the isolates were in one group while only two isolates clustered on the second clade. Within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia strains, 54 variable positions and 23 polymorphic amino acids were noticed. Isolates with epsilon- and beta-toxins were variable and were found to be close to those published for C. perfringens. ETX gene sequences encoding epsilon-toxins were found to be related to CPE sequences.