Production and characterisation of Campylobacter jejuni enterotoxin in a synthetic medium and its assay in rat ileal loops.

A synthetic medium for production of Campylobacter jejuni enterotoxin was developed for the purposes of its purification by modifying syncase medium, replacing sucrose with glucose, and supplementing with 0.025% sodium pyruvate, 0.25% sodium metabisulphite, 0.001% ferric chloride and 0.1% L-cysteine, adjusted to pH 6.7. Culture filtrates of a human diarrhoeal and a chicken isolate, grown in this medium caused fluid accumulation ranging between 0.50-0.70 ml/cm of rat ileal loop. The kinetics of toxin production indicated a peak at 36 h and decline by 72 h, coinciding with the period of release of protease by the organism. At least 0.4 rat ileal loop units of enterotoxic activity was recovered per ml of culture filtrates and one unit of this toxin contained only 14 micrograms of protein. The toxin is heat-labile, pH dependent, nonhaemolytic, resistant to trypsin, sensitive to papain and pronase and may show subunit molecular weight analogy with CT subunits.