BACKGROUND
bacillus cereus is a common cause of bacterial foodborne disease, characterized by either emetic or diarrhoeal syndromes  <cit> .
three chromosomally encoded toxins are generally linked to diarrhoeal illness: haemolysin bl   <cit> , non-haemolytic enterotoxin   <cit>  and cytotoxin k   <cit> .
hbl and nhe are three-component toxins composed of proteins l <dig>  l <dig> and b, and nhea, nheb and nhec, respectively.
the genes encoding all three enterotoxins are found to a similar extent in most species of the b. cereus group  <cit> , and their expression is positively regulated by the plcr/papr quorum sensing system  <cit> .
b. cereus nvh 391/ <dig>  isolated in  <dig> from an outbreak causing fatal enteritis, has been shown to express neither hbl nor nhe  <cit> , and was the strain in which cytk was first identified  <cit> .
phylogenetic studies have shown that this strain is placed uniquely distant from main b. cereus group clusters  <cit> .
it is currently being subjected to complete genome sequencing by the doe joint genome institute .
we previously found that this strain carried a particularly cytotoxic variant of the cytk protein, named cytk- <dig>  which partly explained why nvh 391/ <dig> was highly pathogenic  <cit> .
results also indicate that the high cytotoxicity of this strain is a result of an exceptionally high level of cytk expression  <cit> .
in earlier studies, in all other strains identified to carry cytk, the toxin existed as a different, less cytotoxic variant, named cytk- <dig>  recently, we identified two additional b. cereus strains carrying cytk-1: nvh 883/ <dig> and inra af <dig>  <cit> .
in a study performed to elucidate the genetic structure of the b. cereus group, these three strains appear to constitute a cluster genetically remote from all other tested strains .
while nvh 391/ <dig> and inra inra af <dig> were highly cytotoxic, nvh 883/ <dig> was in initial experiments shown to be non-toxic towards vero cells.
the aim of this study was to investigate and compare the strains of this rare genetic group, to potentially gain insight into mechanisms responsible for the dramatic differences in cytotoxicity between strains.
RESULTS
strains carrying cytk- <dig> have varying levels of toxicity towards vero cells
supernatants collected from late log phase cultures of strains nvh 391/ <dig> and inra af <dig> grown at 32°c and 37°c, as well as strain nvh 391/ <dig> grown anaerobically at 32°c, gave 100% inhibition of protein synthesis in the vero cell assay, showing that these strains were highly cytotoxic.
in contrast, the supernatants tested from nvh 883/ <dig>  obtained from cultures grown at 37°c, 32°c, and 25°c, the latter concentrated by a factor of  <dig>  as well as cultures grown anaerobically at 32°c, were shown to have undetectable toxicity in this assay.
to determine whether differential cytk expression could be responsible for the varying levels of toxicity, western immunoblotting of supernatants from all three strains grown at 32°c were performed using cytk antiserum.
the results presented in figure  <dig> show that nvh 883/ <dig> expressed substantially less cytk than did nvh 391/ <dig> and inra af <dig>
a novel variant of nhe was identified in all three strains
both strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig> were negative in the tecra and the oxoid assays, which are commercial kits that employ monoclonal antibodies directed against nhea and hbl component l <dig>  respectively, to detect the presence of nhe and hbl in b. cereus culture supernatants.
furthermore, all three strains were negative in western immunoblots using monoclonal antibodies directed against nhea and hbl component b. however, strains nvh 391/ <dig> and inra af <dig>  but not nvh 883/ <dig>  were positive in a western immunoblot using an antibody that is reactive towards both nheb and hbl component l <dig>  giving a band of the same size as nheb .
this was quite unexpected as strain nvh 391/ <dig> had previously been shown to not contain the genes encoding nhe  <cit> .
pcr experiments using several sets of primers designed on the basis of published sequences of nhe were positive for all three strains with a few of the primer pairs used, thus providing us with a starting point for obtaining the complete sequences of nhe in these strains .
dna sequencing of the nhe operons in strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig> revealed a novel variant of nhe,  <dig> % identical in dna sequence between the two strains.
the deduced sequences of the three proteins comprising the nhe toxin, nhea, nheb and nhec, from nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig> were 77–81%, 87–88%, and 72–74% identical, respectively, to the corresponding protein sequences in b. cereus e33l, atcc  <dig>  atcc  <dig>  g <dig>  bacillus thuringiensis serovar konkukian str.
97– <dig>  serovar israelensis atcc  <dig>  and bacillus weihenstephanensis kbab <dig>  in comparison, the identities between the nhe proteins in this set of strains were 96–99%, 97–100%, and 91–99%, respectively.
the plcr transcriptional regulator cannot account for varying levels of toxin expression
the plcr/papr quorum sensing system is presently the only established regulator of extracellular virulence factors in b. cereus group strains  <cit> .
transcription of cytk from strain nvh 391/ <dig> has previously been shown to be plcr-dependent, even though the cytk promoter in this strain contains a plcr recognition sequence with one base divergence from the currently defined plcr recognition sequence  <cit> .
however, as the cytk promoter regions of strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig> are 100% identical, differences in the promoter regions cannot account for the differential expression of cytk in these two strains.
also, a perfect plcr recognition sequence was found upstream of nhea in both strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>
to explore whether differences in the plcr/papr system itself could be responsible for the observed differential expression of cytk and nhe, plcr and papr were sequenced in strains nvh 391/ <dig>  nvh 883/ <dig>  and inra af <dig>  the deduced amino acid sequences of both plcr and papr were 100% identical in the three strains.
furthermore, the expression of plcr was determined to be of comparable level in all three investigated strains using western immunoblotting .
yvrgh and yvftu two-component systems are not responsible for the varying toxin levels
regulation of virulence gene expression by two-component systems has been described in a wide range of pathogenic bacteria  <cit> .
a partial sequence encoding a protein with homology towards the yvrg histidine kinase in atcc  <dig> was previously identified to be located upstream of cytk in nvh 391/ <dig>  <cit> , while in atcc  <dig>  genes bc_ <dig> and bc_ <dig> encoding a putative two-component system  are located upstream from plcr  <cit> .
as two-component systems sometimes control the expression of genes located in the same locus, we explored whether these two-component systems could have a regulatory function explaining the observed differential expression of toxins.
yvrgh and yvftu were dna sequenced in both strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>
the deduced amino acid sequences of yvrh and yvrg each differed with only one amino acid between strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>  a knockout mutant was obtained in b. cereus atcc  <dig>  unfortunately, the mutant could not be prepared in nvh 391/ <dig>  as all attempts to transform this strain failed despite various conditions used  <cit> .
however, no difference between the b. cereus atcc  <dig> wild-type and the yvrgh null mutant could be observed in western immunoblots where culture supernatants were probed using cytk antiserum, in the vero cell cytotoxicity assay, or in transcriptional assays of cytk expression using lacz fusions .
unpublished results  indicate that a knockout mutant of the yvftu two-component system in b. cereus atcc  <dig> showed reduced expression of cytk using lacz fusions, compared with the wild-type strain.
however, the yvftu locus located immediately upstream from plcr was 100% identical in strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>  reverse transcription  pcr experiments were carried out to assess whether or not yvftu was expressed in the low toxin-producing strain nvh 883/ <dig>  the results in figure  <dig> show that yvftu was expressed in all strains.
thus, neither the yvrgh nor the yvftu two-component systems seemed to be responsible for the divergent expression of toxins in the presently investigated b. cereus strains.
the three investigated strains are genetically remote from other strains of the b. cereus group
during the course of this study,  <dig> genes were dna sequenced in strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>  it became apparent that while all examined genes were of high identity  in nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>  their identity towards other b. cereus strains from which dna sequences are publicly available was typically around 70–80%.
using pcr experiments, inra af <dig> was confirmed to contain the same gene variants as nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>  a total of  <dig> pcr reactions were performed, covering all  <dig> investigated genes, using a combination of  <dig> primers specific to strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig> .
to further study the genetic relatedness of these three strains towards other strains of the b. cereus group, multilocus sequence typing  was performed, using partial sequences of the seven housekeeping genes adk, ccpa, glpf, glpt, panc, pta, and pyca.
the mlst scheme used is from the university of oslo's bacillus cereus group multilocus sequence typing website  <cit> , which is adapted from three previously published schemes  <cit> .
the obtained sequences from strains nvh 391/ <dig> and inra af <dig> were 100% identical, while the only difference between the sequences of these two strains and nvh 883/ <dig> were one nucleotide change in each of panc and pta.
figure  <dig> shows the phylogenetic tree prepared from the sequences obtained from the three examined strains and the corresponding sequences from other b. cereus group strains.
the results clearly show that strains nvh 391/ <dig>  nvh 883/ <dig>  and inra af <dig> comprise a genetically remote cluster of strains within the b. cereus group.
discussion
in the present study, we have investigated aspects of cytotoxicity, toxin production and regulation in a genetically remote and rare collection of strains within the b. cereus group.
the original strain of this type, b. cereus nvh 391/ <dig>  was highly pathogenic and the strain in which cytk was first discovered  <cit> , while the closely related b. cereus nvh 883/ <dig> and inra af <dig> are the only two other identified strains of this group.
we have identified a novel variant of the genes encoding nhe in all three investigated strains.
nhe was previously undetected in nvh 391/ <dig>  <cit> , most likely due to the high sequence divergence of the novel nhe-variant as compared with previously identified nhe proteins.
this would result in lack of detection by pcr and by assays employing monoclonal antibodies lacking cross-reactivity towards epitopes on the novel nhe variant.
this is supported by the discovery by dietrich et al.
<cit>  that when monoclonal antibodies were raised against nheb purified from b. cereus b-4ac,  <dig> out of  <dig> of the obtained antibodies showed reactivity towards an exoprotein from nvh 391/ <dig> of the same size as nheb.
while strains nvh 391/ <dig> and inra af <dig> were shown to be highly cytotoxic towards vero cells and expressed high levels of the toxins cytk and nheb, strain nvh 883/ <dig> was shown to be non-toxic under all conditions tested, with low or absent toxin expression.
to date, these are the only three strains that have been identified to carry the cytk- <dig> variant  <cit> .
the presence of cytk- <dig> was implicated as the primary reason for the high pathogenicity of nvh 391/ <dig>  due to the greater cytotoxic activity of cytk- <dig> compared with the cytk- <dig> variant  <cit> , and a particularly high level of cytk- <dig> expression  <cit> .
although these factors certainly still seem valid, the identification of the non-toxic nvh 883/ <dig> carrying cytk- <dig> indicates that the presence of this gene variant is not a sufficient criterion for identification of highly cytotoxic strains.
it has been proposed that gene content plays a small role in the diversity of phenotype and pathogenicity observed between b. cereus group strains, and that subtle changes to regulatory networks are of much greater importance  <cit> .
selected regulatory genes were investigated and compared, to potentially identify mechanisms responsible for the differential expression of toxins in nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>  the plcr/papr quorum sensing system is presently the only established regulator of expression of extracellular virulence factors in b. cereus group strains  <cit> .
however, as the deduced plcr and papr proteins were 100% identical between strains nvh 391/ <dig> and nvh 883/ <dig>  and the expression of plcr was determined to be of comparable level, we propose that additional regulatory factors are involved.
two-component systems have often been shown to play key roles in regulation of virulence in bacteria  <cit> .
in the current study, the possibility that two selected two-component systems, yvrgh and yvftu, had a regulatory function related to toxin production was explored.
both were initially chosen for investigation based on their proximity to cytk- <dig> and plcr, respectively, as genes under the control of a two-component system often map in the vicinity of the regulatory genes  <cit> .
however, neither the yvrgh nor the yvftu two-component systems seemed to be responsible for the divergent expression of toxins in the presently investigated b. cereus strains, even though yvftu has been implicated in positive regulation of cytk expression in b. cereus atcc  <dig> .
phylogenetic analysis  of strains nvh 391/ <dig>  nvh 883/ <dig>  and inra af <dig> compared to other b. cereus group strains showed that these three strains comprise a genetically remote cluster of strains within the b. cereus group.
thus, the presence of the novel nhe operon and the cytk- <dig> gene variant in these strains are intrinsic to the distant phylogenetic relationship towards other strains of the b. cereus group.
previous phylogenetic studies by sorokin et al.
<cit>  places strain nvh 391/ <dig> rather far from main b. cereus group strain clusters.
based on these data, one could propose that the presently studied b. cereus strains should comprise a novel species.
the assignment of a new species has probably been hampered by the fact that prior to the current report, only one single strain of this cluster  has been described, and perhaps that these strains do not seem to be distinguishable from other b. cereus strains based on traditional criteria such as morphology and phenotype.
CONCLUSIONS
we have discovered a novel nhe variant in a rare group of b. cereus strains, which has previously been undetected in culture supernatants using pcr and methods based on monoclonal antibodies, due to its divergent sequence as compared with previously identified nhe proteins.
despite cytk- <dig> expression having been shown to be exceptionally high in strain nvh 391/ <dig>  <cit> , the presence of a cytk- <dig> gene alone does not imply that the organism has high pathogenic potential, since strain nvh 883/ <dig> carries cytk- <dig> but is non-cytotoxic.
however, the presence of the novel nhe operon and the cytk- <dig> gene variant in strains nvh 391/ <dig>  nvh 883/ <dig> and inra af <dig> seems to be a characteristic that is linked to their distant genetic relationship towards other b. cereus group strains.
furthermore, we found no evidence that the plcr/papr system or the yvrgh and yvftu two-component systems are responsible for the differing levels of nhe and cytk toxin expression between these strains.
we therefore postulate that there must be additional unidentified regulatory mechanisms that are of significant importance for regulation of toxin expression in b. cereus.

 bacillus cereus is a common cause of bacterial foodborne disease, characterized by either emetic or diarrhoeal syndromes. three chromosomally encoded toxins are generally linked to diarrhoeal illness: haemolysin bl, non-haemolytic enterotoxin and cytotoxin k. hbl and nhe are three-component toxins composed of proteins l l and b, and nhea, nheb and nhec, respectively. the genes encoding all three enterotoxins are found to a similar extent in most species of the b. cereus group, and their expression is positively regulated by the plcr/papr quorum sensing system. b. cereus nvh 391/ isolated in from an outbreak causing fatal enteritis, has been shown to express neither hbl nor nhe, and was the strain in which cytk was first identified. phylogenetic studies have shown that this strain is placed uniquely distant from main b. cereus group clusters. it is currently being subjected to complete genome sequencing by the doe joint genome institute. we previously found that this strain carried a particularly cytotoxic variant of the cytk protein, named cytk- which partly explained why nvh 391/ was highly pathogenic. results also indicate that the high cytotoxicity of this strain is a result of an exceptionally high level of cytk expression. in earlier studies, in all other strains identified to carry cytk, the toxin existed as a different, less cytotoxic variant, named cytk- recently, we identified two additional b. cereus strains carrying cytk-1: nvh 883/ and inra af. in a study performed to elucidate the genetic structure of the b. cereus group, these three strains appear to constitute a cluster genetically remote from all other tested strains. while nvh 391/ and inra inra af were highly cytotoxic, nvh 883/ was in initial experiments shown to be non-toxic towards vero cells. the aim of this study was to investigate and compare the strains of this rare genetic group, to potentially gain insight into mechanisms responsible for the dramatic differences in cytotoxicity between strains.  strains carrying cytk- have varying levels of toxicity towards vero cells supernatants collected from late log phase cultures of strains nvh 391/ and inra af grown at 32°c and 37°c, as well as strain nvh 391/ grown anaerobically at 32°c, gave 100% inhibition of protein synthesis in the vero cell assay, showing that these strains were highly cytotoxic. in contrast, the supernatants tested from nvh 883/ obtained from cultures grown at 37°c, 32°c, and 25°c, the latter concentrated by a factor of as well as cultures grown anaerobically at 32°c, were shown to have undetectable toxicity in this assay. to determine whether differential cytk expression could be responsible for the varying levels of toxicity, western immunoblotting of supernatants from all three strains grown at 32°c were performed using cytk antiserum. the results presented in figure show that nvh 883/ expressed substantially less cytk than did nvh 391/ and inra af a novel variant of nhe was identified in all three strains both strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ were negative in the tecra and the oxoid assays, which are commercial kits that employ monoclonal antibodies directed against nhea and hbl component l respectively, to detect the presence of nhe and hbl in b. cereus culture supernatants. furthermore, all three strains were negative in western immunoblots using monoclonal antibodies directed against nhea and hbl component b. however, strains nvh 391/ and inra af but not nvh 883/ were positive in a western immunoblot using an antibody that is reactive towards both nheb and hbl component l giving a band of the same size as nheb. this was quite unexpected as strain nvh 391/ had previously been shown to not contain the genes encoding nhe. pcr experiments using several sets of primers designed on the basis of published sequences of nhe were positive for all three strains with a few of the primer pairs used, thus providing us with a starting point for obtaining the complete sequences of nhe in these strains. dna sequencing of the nhe operons in strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ revealed a novel variant of nhe, % identical in dna sequence between the two strains. the deduced sequences of the three proteins comprising the nhe toxin, nhea, nheb and nhec, from nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ were 77–81%, 87–88%, and 72–74% identical, respectively, to the corresponding protein sequences in b. cereus e33l, atcc atcc g bacillus thuringiensis serovar konkukian str. 97– serovar israelensis atcc and bacillus weihenstephanensis kbab in comparison, the identities between the nhe proteins in this set of strains were 96–99%, 97–100%, and 91–99%, respectively. the plcr transcriptional regulator cannot account for varying levels of toxin expression the plcr/papr quorum sensing system is presently the only established regulator of extracellular virulence factors in b. cereus group strains. transcription of cytk from strain nvh 391/ has previously been shown to be plcr-dependent, even though the cytk promoter in this strain contains a plcr recognition sequence with one base divergence from the currently defined plcr recognition sequence. however, as the cytk promoter regions of strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ are 100% identical, differences in the promoter regions cannot account for the differential expression of cytk in these two strains. also, a perfect plcr recognition sequence was found upstream of nhea in both strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ to explore whether differences in the plcr/papr system itself could be responsible for the observed differential expression of cytk and nhe, plcr and papr were sequenced in strains nvh 391/ nvh 883/ and inra af the deduced amino acid sequences of both plcr and papr were 100% identical in the three strains. furthermore, the expression of plcr was determined to be of comparable level in all three investigated strains using western immunoblotting. yvrgh and yvftu two-component systems are not responsible for the varying toxin levels regulation of virulence gene expression by two-component systems has been described in a wide range of pathogenic bacteria. a partial sequence encoding a protein with homology towards the yvrg histidine kinase in atcc was previously identified to be located upstream of cytk in nvh 391/, while in atcc genes bc_ and bc_ encoding a putative two-component system are located upstream from plcr. as two-component systems sometimes control the expression of genes located in the same locus, we explored whether these two-component systems could have a regulatory function explaining the observed differential expression of toxins. yvrgh and yvftu were dna sequenced in both strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ the deduced amino acid sequences of yvrh and yvrg each differed with only one amino acid between strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ a knockout mutant was obtained in b. cereus atcc unfortunately, the mutant could not be prepared in nvh 391/ as all attempts to transform this strain failed despite various conditions used. however, no difference between the b. cereus atcc wild-type and the yvrgh null mutant could be observed in western immunoblots where culture supernatants were probed using cytk antiserum, in the vero cell cytotoxicity assay, or in transcriptional assays of cytk expression using lacz fusions. unpublished results indicate that a knockout mutant of the yvftu two-component system in b. cereus atcc showed reduced expression of cytk using lacz fusions, compared with the wild-type strain. however, the yvftu locus located immediately upstream from plcr was 100% identical in strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ reverse transcription pcr experiments were carried out to assess whether or not yvftu was expressed in the low toxin-producing strain nvh 883/ the results in figure show that yvftu was expressed in all strains. thus, neither the yvrgh nor the yvftu two-component systems seemed to be responsible for the divergent expression of toxins in the presently investigated b. cereus strains. the three investigated strains are genetically remote from other strains of the b. cereus group during the course of this study, genes were dna sequenced in strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ it became apparent that while all examined genes were of high identity in nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ their identity towards other b. cereus strains from which dna sequences are publicly available was typically around 70–80%. using pcr experiments, inra af was confirmed to contain the same gene variants as nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ a total of pcr reactions were performed, covering all investigated genes, using a combination of primers specific to strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/. to further study the genetic relatedness of these three strains towards other strains of the b. cereus group, multilocus sequence typing was performed, using partial sequences of the seven housekeeping genes adk, ccpa, glpf, glpt, panc, pta, and pyca. the mlst scheme used is from the university of oslo's bacillus cereus group multilocus sequence typing website, which is adapted from three previously published schemes. the obtained sequences from strains nvh 391/ and inra af were 100% identical, while the only difference between the sequences of these two strains and nvh 883/ were one nucleotide change in each of panc and pta. figure shows the phylogenetic tree prepared from the sequences obtained from the three examined strains and the corresponding sequences from other b. cereus group strains. the results clearly show that strains nvh 391/ nvh 883/ and inra af comprise a genetically remote cluster of strains within the b. cereus group. discussion in the present study, we have investigated aspects of cytotoxicity, toxin production and regulation in a genetically remote and rare collection of strains within the b. cereus group. the original strain of this type, b. cereus nvh 391/ was highly pathogenic and the strain in which cytk was first discovered, while the closely related b. cereus nvh 883/ and inra af are the only two other identified strains of this group. we have identified a novel variant of the genes encoding nhe in all three investigated strains. nhe was previously undetected in nvh 391/, most likely due to the high sequence divergence of the novel nhe-variant as compared with previously identified nhe proteins. this would result in lack of detection by pcr and by assays employing monoclonal antibodies lacking cross-reactivity towards epitopes on the novel nhe variant. this is supported by the discovery by dietrich et al. that when monoclonal antibodies were raised against nheb purified from b. cereus b-4ac, out of of the obtained antibodies showed reactivity towards an exoprotein from nvh 391/ of the same size as nheb. while strains nvh 391/ and inra af were shown to be highly cytotoxic towards vero cells and expressed high levels of the toxins cytk and nheb, strain nvh 883/ was shown to be non-toxic under all conditions tested, with low or absent toxin expression. to date, these are the only three strains that have been identified to carry the cytk- variant. the presence of cytk- was implicated as the primary reason for the high pathogenicity of nvh 391/ due to the greater cytotoxic activity of cytk- compared with the cytk- variant, and a particularly high level of cytk- expression. although these factors certainly still seem valid, the identification of the non-toxic nvh 883/ carrying cytk- indicates that the presence of this gene variant is not a sufficient criterion for identification of highly cytotoxic strains. it has been proposed that gene content plays a small role in the diversity of phenotype and pathogenicity observed between b. cereus group strains, and that subtle changes to regulatory networks are of much greater importance. selected regulatory genes were investigated and compared, to potentially identify mechanisms responsible for the differential expression of toxins in nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ the plcr/papr quorum sensing system is presently the only established regulator of expression of extracellular virulence factors in b. cereus group strains. however, as the deduced plcr and papr proteins were 100% identical between strains nvh 391/ and nvh 883/ and the expression of plcr was determined to be of comparable level, we propose that additional regulatory factors are involved. two-component systems have often been shown to play key roles in regulation of virulence in bacteria. in the current study, the possibility that two selected two-component systems, yvrgh and yvftu, had a regulatory function related to toxin production was explored. both were initially chosen for investigation based on their proximity to cytk- and plcr, respectively, as genes under the control of a two-component system often map in the vicinity of the regulatory genes. however, neither the yvrgh nor the yvftu two-component systems seemed to be responsible for the divergent expression of toxins in the presently investigated b. cereus strains, even though yvftu has been implicated in positive regulation of cytk expression in b. cereus atcc. phylogenetic analysis of strains nvh 391/ nvh 883/ and inra af compared to other b. cereus group strains showed that these three strains comprise a genetically remote cluster of strains within the b. cereus group. thus, the presence of the novel nhe operon and the cytk- gene variant in these strains are intrinsic to the distant phylogenetic relationship towards other strains of the b. cereus group. previous phylogenetic studies by sorokin et al. places strain nvh 391/ rather far from main b. cereus group strain clusters. based on these data, one could propose that the presently studied b. cereus strains should comprise a novel species. the assignment of a new species has probably been hampered by the fact that prior to the current report, only one single strain of this cluster has been described, and perhaps that these strains do not seem to be distinguishable from other b. cereus strains based on traditional criteria such as morphology and phenotype.  we have discovered a novel nhe variant in a rare group of b. cereus strains, which has previously been undetected in culture supernatants using pcr and methods based on monoclonal antibodies, due to its divergent sequence as compared with previously identified nhe proteins. despite cytk- expression having been shown to be exceptionally high in strain nvh 391/, the presence of a cytk- gene alone does not imply that the organism has high pathogenic potential, since strain nvh 883/ carries cytk- but is non-cytotoxic. however, the presence of the novel nhe operon and the cytk- gene variant in strains nvh 391/ nvh 883/ and inra af seems to be a characteristic that is linked to their distant genetic relationship towards other b. cereus group strains. furthermore, we found no evidence that the plcr/papr system or the yvrgh and yvftu two-component systems are responsible for the differing levels of nhe and cytk toxin expression between these strains. we therefore postulate that there must be additional unidentified regulatory mechanisms that are of significant importance for regulation of toxin expression in b. cereus. 
a novel gene variant encoding nhe was identified in these three strains, which had an average of 80% identity in protein sequence with previously identified nhe toxins. the observation that strain nvh 883/ carries cytk- but is non-cytotoxic indicates that the detection of this gene variant is not a sufficient criterion for identification of highly cytotoxic strains. the presence of the novel nhe operon and the cytk- gene variant in this cluster of strains reflect their phylogenetically remote relationship towards other b. cereus group strains. comparative sequence and expression studies indicated that neither the plcr/papr quorum sensing system, nor theyvrgh and yvftu two-component systems, were responsible for the observed difference in toxin production. due to its divergent sequence, the novel nhe operon had previously not been detected in nvh 391/ using pcr and several monoclonal antibodies. this strain lacked the genes encoding hbl and nhe, but contains cytk- the high virulence of this strain is thought to be due to the greater cytotoxic activity of cytk- compared to cytk- and to a high level of cytk expression. while culture supernatants containing cytk and nhe from nvh 391/ and inra af were highly cytotoxic, nvh 883/ expressed little or no cytk and nhe and was non-cytotoxic. b. cereus strain nvh 391/ isolated from a case of fatal enteritis, was genetically remote from other b. cereus group strains. toxin gene profiling and assays for detection of toxin-producing stains have been used in attempts to evaluate the enterotoxic potential of b. cereus group strains. additionally, phylogenetic analysis of genes showed that nvh 391/ nvh 883/ and inra af comprise a novel cluster of strains genetically distant from other b. cereus group strains. three enterotoxins are implicated in diarrhoeal food poisoning due to bacillus cereus: haemolysin bl, non-haemolytic enterotoxin, and cytotoxin k.
 three enterotoxins are implicated in diarrhoeal food poisoning due to bacillus cereus: haemolysin bl, non-haemolytic enterotoxin, and cytotoxin k. toxin gene profiling and assays for detection of toxin-producing stains have been used in attempts to evaluate the enterotoxic potential of b. cereus group strains. b. cereus strain nvh 391/ isolated from a case of fatal enteritis, was genetically remote from other b. cereus group strains. this strain lacked the genes encoding hbl and nhe, but contains cytk- the high virulence of this strain is thought to be due to the greater cytotoxic activity of cytk- compared to cytk- and to a high level of cytk expression. to date, only three strains containing cytk- have been identified; b. cereus strains nvh 391/ nvh 883/ and inra af  a novel gene variant encoding nhe was identified in these three strains, which had an average of 80% identity in protein sequence with previously identified nhe toxins. while culture supernatants containing cytk and nhe from nvh 391/ and inra af were highly cytotoxic, nvh 883/ expressed little or no cytk and nhe and was non-cytotoxic. comparative sequence and expression studies indicated that neither the plcr/papr quorum sensing system, nor theyvrgh and yvftu two-component systems, were responsible for the observed difference in toxin production. additionally, phylogenetic analysis of genes showed that nvh 391/ nvh 883/ and inra af comprise a novel cluster of strains genetically distant from other b. cereus group strains.  due to its divergent sequence, the novel nhe operon had previously not been detected in nvh 391/ using pcr and several monoclonal antibodies. thus, toxigenic profiling based on the original nhe sequence will fail to detect the toxin in this group of strains. the observation that strain nvh 883/ carries cytk- but is non-cytotoxic indicates that the detection of this gene variant is not a sufficient criterion for identification of highly cytotoxic strains. the presence of the novel nhe operon and the cytk- gene variant in this cluster of strains reflect their phylogenetically remote relationship towards other b. cereus group strains. 