↓ Skip to main content

Increased toxin expression in a Clostridium difficile mfd mutant

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Microbiology, December 2015
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • Average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (70th percentile)

Mentioned by

twitter
3 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page

Citations

dimensions_citation
18 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
18 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Increased toxin expression in a Clostridium difficile mfd mutant
Published in
BMC Microbiology, December 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12866-015-0611-5
Pubmed ID
Authors

Stephanie E. Willing, Emma J. Richards, Lluis Sempere, Aaron G. Dale, Simon M. Cutting, Neil F. Fairweather

Abstract

The symptoms of Clostridium difficile infection are mediated primarily by two toxins, TcdA and TcdB, the expression of which is governed by a multitude of factors including nutrient availability, growth phase and cell stress. Several global regulators have been implicated in the regulation of toxin expression, such as CcpA and CodY. During attempts to insertionally inactivate a putative secondary cell wall polysaccharide synthesis gene, we obtained several mutants containing off-target insertions. One mutant displayed an unusual branched colony morphology and was investigated further. Marker recovery revealed an insertion in mfd, a gene encoding a transcription-coupled repair factor. The mfd mutant exhibited pleiotropic effects, in particular increased expression of both toxin A and B (TcdA and TcdB) compared to the parental strain. Western blotting and cellular cytotoxicity assays revealed increased expression across all time points over a 24 h period, with inactivation of mfd resulting in at least a 10 fold increase in cell cytotoxicity. qRT-PCR demonstrated the upregulation of both toxins occurred on a transcriptional level. All effects of the mfd mutation were complemented by a plasmid-encoded copy of mfd, showing the effects are not due to polar effects of the intron insertion or to second site mutations. This study adds Mfd to the repertoire of factors involved in regulation of toxin expression in Clostridium difficile. Mfd is known to remove RNA polymerase molecules from transcriptional sites where it has stalled due to repressor action, preventing transcriptional read through. The consistently high levels of toxin in the C. difficile mfd mutant indicate this process is inefficient leading to transcriptional de-repression.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 3 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 18 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 18 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 3 17%
Student > Doctoral Student 1 6%
Librarian 1 6%
Student > Bachelor 1 6%
Researcher 1 6%
Other 0 0%
Unknown 11 61%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 3 17%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 1 6%
Immunology and Microbiology 1 6%
Social Sciences 1 6%
Chemistry 1 6%
Other 0 0%
Unknown 11 61%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 09 April 2019.
All research outputs
#13,451,930
of 22,835,198 outputs
Outputs from BMC Microbiology
#1,273
of 3,191 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#187,197
of 388,246 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Microbiology
#11
of 37 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,835,198 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 39th percentile – i.e., 39% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,191 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.1. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 57% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 388,246 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 50% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 37 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its contemporaries.