Progress in research of molecular typing of Clostridium perfringens

Clostridium perfringens is a common pathogenic bacterium found in the human gastrointestinal tract, animals, food, and the environment. It has been identified as one of the major causes of foodborne disease outbreaks in the United States, some EU countries and Japan. In recent years, the frequency of C. perfringens infection has been increasing remarkably around the world. At present, there are many studies of molecular epidemiology of C. perfringens. The molecular typing methods commonly used include pulse field gel electrophoresis, multi-site sequence analysis, core gene multi-site sequence typing, toxin typing, and whole genome sequencing analysis. As the development of molecular typing methods, the effectiveness and accuracy improvements of the diagnosis and investigation of C. perfringens infection become possible, which can provide data basis for studying the transmission mechanism, epidemiological investigation, evolution and species characteristics of C. perfringens.