Roles of RpoN in the resistance of Campylobacter jejuni under various stress conditions

BMC Microbiology

Research Article

Sunyoung Hwang¹  Jiae Yun¹  Sangryeol Ryu¹  Byeonghwa Jeon² 

[1] Department of Food and Animal Biotechnology, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, and Center for Agricultural Biomaterials, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea;Department of Pathology and Microbiology, Atlantic Veterinary College, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PE, Canada;

关键词: Osmotic Stress;    Sigma Factor;    Acid Stress;    Alkali Stress;    Complementation Strain;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2180-11-207

 received in 2011-04-19, accepted in 2011-09-22,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCampylobacter jejuni is a leading foodborne pathogen worldwide. Despite the fastidious nature of C. jejuni growth, increasing numbers of human campylobacteriosis suggest that C. jejuni may possess unique mechanisms to survive under various stress conditions. C. jejuni possesses only three sigma factors (FliA, RpoD, and RpoN) and lacks stress-defense sigma factors. Since FliA and RpoD are dedicated to flagella synthesis and housekeeping, respectively, in this study, we investigated the role of RpoN in C. jejuni's defense against various stresses.ResultsSurvivability of an rpoN mutant was compared with the wild-type C. jejuni under various stress conditions. While the growth of the rpoN mutant was as comparably as that of the wild type in shaking cultures, the rpoN mutant exhibited significant survival defects when cultured statically. The rpoN mutant was more sensitive to osmotic stress (0.8% NaCl) with abnormally-elongated cell morphology. Compared to the wile type, the rpoN mutant was more susceptible to acid stress (pH 5) and more resistant to hydrogen peroxide. However, the rpoN mutation had little effect on the resistance of C. jejuni to alkaline pH, heat, cold and antimicrobials.ConclusionsThe results demonstrate that RpoN plays an important role in C. jejuni's defense against various stresses which this bacterial pathogen may encounter during transmission to and infection of humans.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Hwang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.