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American Society for Microbiology, mSphere, 5(2), 2017

DOI: 10.1128/msphere.00315-17

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The Conserved Spore Coat Protein SpoVM Is Largely Dispensable in Clostridium difficile Spore Formation

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

The spore-forming obligate anaerobe Clostridium difficile is the leading cause of antibiotic-associated diarrheal disease in the United States. When C. difficile spores are ingested by susceptible individuals, they germinate within the gut and transform into vegetative, toxin-secreting cells. During infection, C. difficile must also induce spore formation to survive exit from the host. Since spore formation is essential for transmission, understanding the basic mechanisms underlying sporulation in C. difficile could inform the development of therapeutic strategies targeting spores. In this study, we determine the requirement of the C. difficile homolog of SpoVM, a protein that is essential for spore formation in Bacillus subtilis due to its regulation of coat and cortex formation. We observed that SpoVM plays a minor role in C. difficile spore formation, in contrast with B. subtilis , indicating that this protein would not be a good target for inhibiting spore formation.