M. ANANDA CHITRA
Abstract
Enterotoxemia is the most important and wide spread disease of sheep and goats in India. The disease is usually per acute and acute and death occurs within hours after showing clinical symptoms of watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain, convulsion and recumbency. Enterotoxaemia is caused by Clostridium perfringens type D and under certain conditions the organisms multiplies rapidly and produces high concentration of epsilon toxin leading to toxaemia and death. Epsilon toxin is potent pathogenic Clostridium toxin. Epsilon toxin gene was amplified, sequenced and in silico analysis was attempted in this study. Primer specific for etx gene amplified a product size of 933 bp. C. perfringens type D strain IVRI49 etx gene sequences having 97- 99% homology with the submitted GenBank sequences. Predicted amino acid sequences of this nucleotide sequence revealed that it has high hydrophilicity and consists of mainly beta pleated sheets secondary structures. This protein is predictably more immunogenic with less surface probability. This study will help in designing subunit vaccine and recombinant vaccine and also for diagnostic kit development.