Chromosomal engineering of Clostridium perfringens using group II introns.

Clostridium perfringens is a major natural pathogen of human and domestic animals owing to the production of multiple toxins. Defined clostridial mutants are essential for studying the role of toxins in disease pathogenesis. However, it has been very difficult to introduce mutations into C. perfringens. We recently developed a clostridia-modified targetron that can specifically and efficiently inactivate C. perfringens genes. The usefulness of this system has now been demonstrated by specifically inactivating four different C. perfringens toxin genes.