Clostridium argentinense

Clostridium argentinense
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Bacteria
Division:	Firmicutes
Class:	Clostridia
Family:	Clostridiaceae
Genus:	Clostridium
Species:	Cl. argentinense
Binomial name
Clostridium argentinense Suen et al. 1988

Clostridium argentinense is an anaerobic, motile, gram-positive bacterium. Some bacilli now identified as Cl. argentinense were previously classified as either Cl. subterminale, Cl. hastiforme, or Cl. botulinum toxin group G, respectively.

Like Cl. botulinum, Cl. argentinense produces botulin, a neurotoxin that causes botulism in susceptible mammals. Among this proteolytic species' products are acetic acid, butyric acid, isobutyric acid, isovaleric acid, and hydrogen sulfide. Cl. argentinense is also asaccharolytic (i.e., unable to metabolize carbohydrates).

References

• Suen, Jane C.; Hatheway, Charles L.; Steigerwalt, Arnold G.; Brenner, Don J. (1988), "Clostridium argentinense sp. nov.: A Genetically Homogeneous Group Composed of All Strains of Clostridium botulinum Toxin Type G and Some Nontoxigenic Strains Previously Identified as Clostridium subterminale or Clostridium hastiforme", International Journal of Systemic Bacteriology 38 (4): 375–381, doi:10.1099/00207713-38-4-375, http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/38/4/375 
• Clostridium argentinense: Suen et al., 1988 at National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website.

External links

• Clostridium argentinense at the Catalogue of Life
• UniProt. "Clostridium argentinense" (HTML). http://beta.uniprot.org/taxonomy/29341. Retrieved 2011-01-21.