Newly identified bacteriolytic enzymes that target a wide range of clinical isolates of Clostridium difficile.

ABSTRACT: Clostridium difficile has emerged as a major cause of infectious diarrhea in hospitalized patients, with increasing mortality rate and annual healthcare costs exceeding $3 billion. Since C. difficile infections are associated with the use of antibiotics, there is an urgent need to develop treatments that can inactivate the bacterium selectively without affecting commensal microflora. Lytic enzymes from bacteria and bacteriophages show promise as highly selective and effective antimicrobial agents. These enzymes often have a modular structure, consisting of a catalytic domain and a binding domain. In the current work, using consensus catalytic domain and cell-wall binding domain sequences as probes, we analyzed in silico the genome of C. difficile, as well as phages infecting C. difficile.

SUBMITTER: Mehta KK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5367918 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature