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Assessment of the ability of Clostridium perfringens strains to produce enterotoxin after exposure to defined environmental conditions

Project Code: B14006

25/01/2011

Campden BRI
Shaw, H ; Gaze, J

Clostridium perfringens is a spore forming microorganism capable of causing food poisoning by producing a toxin in the gut after the consumption of contaminated foods. This type of food poisoning is most commonly associated with high protein foods such as meat and poultry. The aim of the project was to gather more information on a wide range of C. perfringens strains and to analyse the ability of these strains to produce toxin after different heat treatments.
The objectives of this project were: to establish a culture collection of C. perfringens strains; to establish a comparative assay for C. perfringens enterotoxin; to investigate in vitro sporulation methods for C. perfringens; define various heating regimes; to apply the heat treatments to spores from C. perfringens strains and determine the amount of entrotoxin produced; to apply the same heat treatments to C. perfringens spores inoculated in to beef slurry and compare the amount of entertoxin produced; test representative strains for entertoxin production in the human gut model; perform molecular typing on of C. perfringens before and after heat treatments and finally to evaluate all the data produced.

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