Cloning and comparison of heat-stable enterotoxin genes from Escherichia coli strains of bovine, porcine, and avian origins.

The Ent plasmid encoding Escherichia coli heat-stable enterotoxin (ST) isolated from bovine, porcine, and avian strains were used for the cloning of ST genes. The ST+ DNA regions were finally cloned into pBR322 as the 1.75 kilobases PstI fragment. The electron microscopic analysis of self-annealed molecules indicated that ST+ recombinant plasmid had a stem-loop structure of a size the same as that observed in their wild type Ent plasmids. The stem-loop structures and the restriction enzyme cleavage mappings indicated that 4 kinds of ST genes cloned in this experiment may be identical to Tn1681. The ST production levels of the recombinant plasmids were higher than those of the original plasmids.