Characterization of a bacteriocinogenic plasmid in Clostridium perfringens CW55.

A bacteriocinogenic strain of Clostridium perfringens was exposed to various curing agents known to accelerate the elimination of extrachromosomal DNA, and 20 independently derived mutants that had lost both the ability to produce bacteriocin and their immunity to it were isolated and characterized. All of the mutants were missing at least two specific plasmid bands seen in the agarose gel plasmid profile of the parent strain. Evidence that the two missing bands represented the open circular and closed circular forms of the same plasmid was obtained by X-ray nicking and restriction endonuclease digestion. The data indicated that bacteriocin production and immunity are controlled by a single plasmid, pCW4, with a molecular weight of 5.6 x 10(6) in this strain. Attempts to transfer the bacteriocinogenic plasmid were unsuccessful.