Real-time polymerase chain reaction for the detection of toxigenic Clostridium botulinum type C1 in waterbird and sediment samples: comparison with other PCR techniques

A quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) for detection of the neurotoxin of the Clostridium botulinum type C (BoNTC) encoding gene has been compared with a nested PCR (nPCR) and a conventional PCR (cPCR) using 2 toxigenic C. botulinum C1 reference strains and samples from bird tissues (n = 30) and sediments (n = 30) from wetlands where botulism outbreaks have been reported. A cPCR based on 16S ribosomal RNA sequences from 60 strains of Clostridium species was also developed to detect the genomic DNA of C. botulinum C in order to evaluate the presence of nontoxigenic strains. Quantitative PCR showed a similar sensitivity to nPCR (