Helicobacter pylori gene silencing in vivo demonstrates urease is essential for chronic infection.

ABSTRACT: Helicobacter pylori infection causes chronic active gastritis that after many years of infection can develop into peptic ulceration or gastric adenocarcinoma. The bacterium is highly adapted to surviving in the gastric environment and a key adaptation is the virulence factor urease. Although widely postulated, the requirement of urease expression for persistent infection has not been elucidated experimentally as conventional urease knockout mutants are incapable of colonization. To overcome this constraint, conditional H. pylori urease mutants were constructed by adapting the tetracycline inducible expression system that enabled changing the urease phenotype of the bacteria during established infection. Through tight regulation we demonstrate that urease expression is not only required for

SUBMITTER: Debowski AW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5500380 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature