The Campylobacter jejuni Cj0268c Protein Is Required for Adhesion and Invasion In Vitro
Figure 3
Assays to test for adhesion, autoagglutination and motility of the strains under investigation.
(1) parental strain NCTC 11168, (2) cj0268c knockout mutant (NCTC 11168::cj0268c), (3) complemented knockout mutant (NCTC 11168::cj0268c-comp-cj0268c). (a) Loss of cj0268c reduces the capability of C. jejuni to adhere to Caco2 cells. Defining the number of wild type strain NCTC 11168 colonies obtained performing adhesion assays as 100%, the mean value of colonies from the mutant NCTC 11168::cj0268c was 60.9% (±5.18, P<0.0039) in contrast to NCTC 11168::cj0268c-comp-cj0268c with a recovery rate of 96.4% (±1.77). (b, c) Gene cj0268c does neither impair the property of C. jejuni to autoagglutinate nor the motility of the pathogen. By performing corresponding tests, no differences among the bacterial strains under investigation could be detected. Both, the percentage of autoagglutinated bacteria and the motility zones did not show any significant differences between wild type, mutant and complemented mutant.