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Infection and Immunity, January 2006, p. 769-772, Vol. 74, No. 1
0019-9567/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/IAI.74.1.769-772.2006
A
28-Regulated Nonflagella Gene Contributes to Virulence of Campylobacter jejuni 81-176
Scarlett Goon,1
Cheryl P. Ewing,1
Maria Lorenzo,2
Dawn Pattarini,1
Gary Majam,1 and
Patricia Guerry1*
Enteric Diseases Department, Naval Medial Research Center, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910,1
Food and Drug Administration MOD1, Beltsville, Maryland2
Received 9 August 2005/
Returned for modification 19 September 2005/
Accepted 25 October 2005

ABSTRACT
A
Campylobacter jejuni 81-176 mutant in Cj0977 was fully motile
but reduced >3 logs compared to the parent in invasion of
intestinal epithelial cells in vitro. The mutant was also attenuated
in a ferret diarrheal disease model. Expression of Cj0977 protein
was dependent on a minimal flagella structure.

TEXT
The motility imparted by the single polar flagella of
Campylobacter jejuni is critical for intestinal colonization and for invasion
into intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) in vitro (
2,
4,
10,
22,
24,
26,
32,
34,
36).
C. jejuni strains appear to use the flagella
structure as a type III secretory organelle in the absence of
specialized secretion systems for virulence factors. Thus,
C. jejuni secretes a set of so-called Cia proteins upon coculture
with IECs (
19,
20,
29). Mutation of
ciaB resulted in loss of
secretion of all Cia proteins and reduced invasion of IECs (
19,
20,
29). Although the Cia proteins are synthesized in nonmotile
mutants, secretion required a minimum flagella filament structure
(
20). A second protein, FlaC, which shows sequence similarity
to flagellin but which is not required for motility or flagella
biogenesis, is also secreted through the flagella apparatus
(
31). FlaC, which is expressed and secreted independently of
CiaB, binds to HEp2 cells in vitro and modulates invasion (
31).
A recent microarray study by Carillo et al. (5) reported up-regulation of several
28 and
54 nonflagella genes in a more virulent variant of the genome strain NCTC 11168 (28). These same genes were also down-regulated in two flagella mutants of NCTC 11168. We have confirmed that many of these same genes are also down-regulated in flagella mutants in C. jejuni 81-176 (S. Goon, C. P. Ewing, and P. Guerry, unpublished data), and here we further characterize one of these
28-regulated genes, Cj0977.
The Cj0977 proteins (Mr, 21.2 kDa; pI 4.8) from 81-176 and NCTC 11168 were 98% identical. The Cj0977 protein lacks a leader sequence or transmembrane domains and is predicted to be cytoplasmic. The protein is conserved within the Proteobacteria and shares some similarity with initiation factor eIF-2B (GenBank accession no. NP_214448). A Cj0977::cat mutant in C. jejuni 81-176 was fully motile (Fig. 1A) and produced a normal flagella filament (Fig. 1B). Purified flagellin from the mutant displayed an isoelectric focusing (IEF) pattern identical to that of 81-176 (Fig. 1C), suggesting that Cj0977 is not involved in flagellin glycosylation (7, 9, 23, 33). There was no difference in growth kinetics of the mutant and the parent 81-176 in Mueller-Hinton (MH) broth, nor were there any changes in either capsular polysaccharide by immunoblot or lipooligosaccharide mobility on silver-stained gels (data not shown).
The Cj0977 mutant and a complement in which the wild-type allele
linked to a Km
r marker was inserted into the
astA gene of the
mutant (
37) were compared to 81-176 for their ability to invade
INT407 cells. The mutant invaded at <0.0015% of the input
inoculum (>1,000-fold reduced compared to the wild type),
as shown in Fig.
2A, and invasion was restored in the complement.
For comparison, mutations were constructed in 81-176 in
ciaB and
flaC. As seen in Fig.
2B, both mutants were reduced in invasion
compared to 81-176 but much less so than the Cj0977 mutant and
less than the corresponding mutations in other strains (
19,
20,
29,
31).
We examined expression of the Cj0977 protein in 10 mutants in
the flagella regulon of 81-176 as shown in Table
1. All of the
mutants in Table
1 were nonmotile, except for the
fliA mutant,
which has a truncated flagella filament that confers reduced
motility (
13). Electron microscopic examination indicated that
the remaining mutants were bald, except for the
flaA flaB mutant
and the
fliD mutant, both of which produced hook structures.
Representative electron micrographs are shown in Fig.
3. The
Cj0977 protein could be observed in immunoblots of whole-cell
preparations of wild-type 81-176 and the complement but was
missing in the mutant, as seen in Fig.
4B. Figure
4 also shows
that no Cj0977 protein could be detected in the
fliA mutant,
and Cj0977 protein levels were significantly reduced in mutants
in
flgR,
flgS,
rpoN,
flgE,
flhA,
flhB, and
fliR. The level of
expression appeared to be slightly reduced in a
flaA flaB double
mutant, and expression appeared to be equivalent to or perhaps
increased in the
fliD mutant. The same preparations were also
immunoblotted with anti-Omp50 (
3) antibody to confirm equal
loading (Fig.
4A and C).
The Cj0977 mutant and the complemented strain were compared
to wild-type 81-176 in the ferret diarrhea model (
1). The Cj0977
mutant was attenuated compared to both the parent and the complement,
as shown in Fig.
5. Thus, fewer animals developed diarrhea over
the course of the experiment when fed the mutant (3 of 16 ferrets)
compared to the wild type (12 out of 16;
P = 0.0038) or complement
(11 out of 16;
P = 0.0113), and those animals that did develop
diarrhea following feeding of the mutant displayed symptoms
later than those fed the wild type or complement.
Although we have not been able to demonstrate secretion of Cj0977
into the supernatant (data not shown), the invasion defect in
the Cj0977 mutant of 81-176 was greater than mutation of either
ciaB or
flaC in the same strain. In TGH9011, the
flaC mutant
invaded at about 14% of the level of the wild type compared
to 43% of the level of the wild type in 81-176. Similarly, while
the
ciaB mutant in F38011 invaded at levels that were about
50-fold lower than those of the parent, the attenuation in 81-176
was 72% of the wild type. The discrepancy may be due, in part,
to technical differences in invasion assays and cell lines used
among different laboratories. However, the observed variations
may reflect inherent differences in microtubule and microfilament
uptake mechanisms among strains (
6,
16-
18,
25,
27,
30).
While much additional work remains to be done to understand the mechanism by which Cj0977 contributes to virulence of 81-176 at the molecular and cellular levels, these preliminary data establish a role for this protein in pathogenesis. This is the first report of coregulation of a virulence determinant with the C. jejuni flagella regulon, and it is similar to reports of
28-regulated virulence genes in other pathogens (8, 14, 15). The data also provide an additional explanation of the role of flagella in pathogenesis of C. jejuni, namely that this virulence gene, and perhaps others that are also
28 or
54 regulated (5 and Goon et al., unpublished), form an integral part of the flagella regulon.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Dave Hendrixson and Vic DiRita for the
rpoN and
fliA deletion mutants of 81-176, Lindsay Holder and Anahita Kiavand
for technical assistance, and Robert Williams for electron microscopy.
This work was supported by RO1 AI043559 and NMRC work unit 6000.RAD1.DA3.A0308 from the Military Infectious Diseases Research Program.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Enteric Diseases Dept., Naval Medical Research Center, 503 Robert Grant Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20910. Phone: (301) 319-7662. Fax: (301) 319-7679. E-mail:
guerryp{at}nmrc.navy.mil.

Editor: J. T. Barbieri

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Infection and Immunity, January 2006, p. 769-772, Vol. 74, No. 1
0019-9567/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/IAI.74.1.769-772.2006
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