Bacterial Toxins: Classification, Cellular Biology, Genetics and Applications

Bacterial toxins are pathogenicity factors that cause diseases for human and thread life of millions people worldwide. This occurs despite the extensive studies conducted to seek for approaches to ameliorate the damages caused by these toxins in the host cell. Therefore, this chapter review and integrate the different available information about bacterial toxins to develop comprehensive classification model, explore genetics insights and draw attention to the fact that bacterial toxins have useful therapeutics and biotechnological applications. The bacterial toxins are generally divided into exotoxin and endotoxin, which divided to four groups divided further to different families. Each of the four main classes uses the same mode of action to interact with the host cell. The genes encoding the different toxins located either in the bacterial chromosome or on the plasmid. In spite of the harmful effects of the bacterial toxins, they have different therapeutics and technological applications. For example, they can be used to treat some diseases, used in DNA sequencing and as biological weapons in biological warfare. However, more research required to classify the unclassified toxins and multidisciplinary research joint genetics and “Omics” approaches may help in deep understanding of the nature of the interaction between the bacterial toxins and the host cells, and assist in design and development of drugs and vaccines to neutralize the harmful effects of these toxins. Nevertheless, bacterial toxins can be abused as biological weapons therefore research focusing on enhancing the biodefence abilities of all world states is highly recommended.