Project description:In order to cause disease, the food- and water-borne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni must face the extreme acidity of the host stomach as well as cope with pH fluctuations in the intestine. In the present study, C. jejuni NCTC 11168 was grown under mild acidic conditions mimicking those encountered in the intestine. The resulting transcriptional profiles revealed how this bacterium fine-tunes gene expression in response to acid stress. This adaptation involves differential expression of respiratory pathways, induction of genes for phosphate transport and repression of energy generation and intermediary metabolism genes. Keywords: acid shock; dose response; transcriptional response to 3 mild-acidic pH growth conditions (pH6.5, pH 6.0 and pH5.0)
Project description:Campylobacter jejuni is a widespread pathogen responsible for most of the food-borne gastrointestinal diseases in Europe. For pathogen control in the food industry, the use of natural antimicrobial molecules is a promising strategy to avoid antibiotic treatments. Isothiocyanates are natural antimicrobial compounds which also display anti-cancer activity. Several studies described the chemoprotective effect of isothiocyanates on eukaryotic cells, but the antimicrobial mechanism is still poorly understood. We investigated the early cellular response of C. jejuni to benzylisothiocyanate (BITC) by both transcriptomic and physiological (respirometry, ATP content measurements and isolations of aggregated proteins).
