Clostridium difficile must form a spore to survive outside the gastrointestinal tract. The factors that trigger sporulation in C. difficile remain poorly understood. We investigated the impact of the global nutritional regulator CodY on sporulation in C. difficile strains from the historical 012 ribotype and the current epidemic 027 ribotype. Our results suggest that the variability of CodY-dependent regulation is an important contributor to virulence and sporulation in current epidemic isolates provides further evidence that nutritional state, virulence, and sporulation are linked in C. difficile.
