The spore-forming, anaerobic Gram positive pathogen Clostridium perfringens encodes
many of its disease-causing toxins on closely related conjugative plasmids. Studies of the
tetracycline resistance plasmid pCW3 have identified many of the genes involved in
conjugative transfer, which are located in the tcp conjugation locus. Upstream of this locus is
an uncharacterised region (the cnaC region) that is highly conserved. This study examined
the importance in pCW3 conjugation of several highly conserved proteins encoded in the …