• Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.131-136
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• 2016

Clostridium novyi (C. novyi) is a gram positive, non-capsulated, motile, obligatory anaerobe that produces endospores. Both C. novyi type A and B produce a bacteriophage encoded lethal alpha toxin which belongs to a family of large clostridial cytotoxins. These large clostridial cytotoxins of C. novyi bind to the uncharacterized receptors on host vascular endothelial cells, which leads to the loss of integrity of the vascular endothelium with subsequent edema, refractory hypotension, organ failure, and sudden death. A total of 13 sudden death cases were submitted to Chonbuk National University-Veterinary Diagnostic Center between June and October, 2015. The samples, mainly liver, were collected in sterile vials after necropsy and processed within 12~24 hours for diagnosis, isolation and identification of C. novyi. All of the 4 gram positive samples showed amplification by PCR. Out of 4 positive samples, 3 were detected to be C. novyi type B and 1 was detected as C. novyi type A. Based on the 16S rDNA sequence analysis, 1 case (150564) showed 99% similarity with C. novyi type A while other 3 cases (150388, 150557 and 150775) presented 99% similarity with C. novyi type B. Based on the results, C. novyi was found to be prevalent in Korean pig farms and causes sudden death to finishing pigs or sows during summer season. Thus, C. novyi should be considered for differential diagnosis on sudden death cases during the summer season.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2014

Site-specific incorporation of unnatural amino acids (SSIUA) into protein can be achieved in vivo by coexpression of an orthogonal pair of suppressor tRNA and engineered aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (ARS) that specifically ligates an unnatural amino acid to the suppressor tRNA. As a step to develop the SSIUA technique in Escherichia coli, here we established a new 2-step screening system that can be used for selecting an ARS variant(s) that ligates an unnatural amino acid to a suppressor tRNA. A positive selection system consists of chloramphenicol acetyl transferase gene containing an amber mutation at the $27^{th}$ residue, and efficiently concentrated amber suppressible ARS with a maximum enrichment factor of $9.0{\times}10^5$. On the other hand, a negative selection system was constructed by adding multiple amber codons in front of a lethal gene encoding the control of cell death B toxin (ccdB) which acts as an inhibitory protein of bacterial topoisomerase II. Amber suppression of ccdB by an orthogonal pair of Saccharomyces cerevisiae tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase (TyrRS) and an amber suppressor tRNA significantly inhibits bacterial growth. This selection system was also able to efficiently remove amber suppressible ARS which could ligate natural amino acids to the suppressor tRNA. Thus, sequential combination of these two selection systems might be able to function as a powerful tool for selecting an ARS variant that specifically ligates an unnatural amino acid to the suppressor tRNA from an ARS mutant pool.