Botulinum versus tetanus neurotoxins: why is botulinum neurotoxin but not tetanus neurotoxin a food poison?

Botulinum and tetanus neurotoxins, produced by Clostridium botulinum and Clostridium tetani, respectively, are the most poisonous poisons known to mankind. Although botulinum and tetanus neurotoxins share several characteristics, such as similar mol. wts, similar macrostructure, virtually identical mode of action, and a strong amino acid sequence homology, the two neurotoxins differ in one very significant way; only botulinum neurotoxin is a food poison. Factors responsible for the food poisoning potential of botulinum neurotoxins seem to be a group of complexing proteins that are also produced by C. botulinum, and are known to associate with the neurotoxin. Translation products of nucleotide sequences upstream to the neurotoxin genes of serotypes A, B, C, D, E and F botulinum neurotoxin reveal the location of genes for one of the complexing proteins that could be transcribed as polycistronic mRNA to include neurotoxin sequences. No such protein seems to be present in C. tetani, suggesting that the lack of complexing proteins might be responsible for tetanus not being a food poison.

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