Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Food Preservation, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
FEMS Microbiol Ecol. 2013 Jun;84(3):433-50. doi: 10.1111/1574-6941.12110. Epub 2013 Apr 4.
Bacillus cereus comprises a highly versatile group of bacteria, which are of particular interest because of their capacity to cause disease. Emetic food poisoning is caused by the toxin cereulide produced during the growth of emetic B. cereus in food, while diarrhoeal food poisoning is the result of enterotoxin production by viable vegetative B. cereus cells in the small intestine, probably in the mucus layer and/or attached to the host's intestinal epithelium. The numbers of B. cereus causing disease are highly variable, depending on diverse factors linked to the host (age, diet, physiology and immunology), bacteria (cellular form, toxin genes and expression) and food (nutritional composition and meal characteristics). Bacillus cereus group strains show impressive ecological diversity, ranging from their saprophytic life cycle in soil to symbiotic (commensal and mutualistic) lifestyles near plant roots and in guts of insects and mammals to various pathogenic ones in diverse insect and mammalian hosts. During all these different ecological lifestyles, their toxins play important roles ranging from providing competitive advantages within microbial communities to inhibition of specific pathogenic organisms for their host and accomplishment of infections by damaging their host's tissues.
蜡样芽胞杆菌是一组非常多样化的细菌，由于其致病能力而受到特别关注。呕吐型食物中毒是由在食物中生长的致吐蜡样芽胞杆菌产生的毒素cereulide 引起的，而腹泻型食物中毒是由小肠中存活的营养体蜡样芽胞杆菌细胞产生肠毒素引起的，可能在黏液层和/或附着在宿主的肠上皮上。引起疾病的蜡样芽胞杆菌数量高度可变，取决于与宿主（年龄、饮食、生理和免疫学）、细菌（细胞形态、毒素基因和表达）和食物（营养成分和膳食特征）相关的多种因素。蜡样芽胞杆菌组菌株表现出令人印象深刻的生态多样性，从土壤中的腐生生活循环到植物根附近的共生（共生和互惠共生）生活方式，再到昆虫和哺乳动物肠道中的各种致病性生活方式，以及在不同的昆虫和哺乳动物宿主中的各种致病性生活方式。在所有这些不同的生态生活方式中，它们的毒素发挥着重要作用，从在微生物群落中提供竞争优势到抑制宿主的特定病原体并通过破坏宿主组织来完成感染。
