Journal article
Characterization of the Thermal Stress Response of Campylobacter jejuni
Infection and immunity, Vol.66(8), pp.3666-3672
08/1998
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/115856
PMCID: PMC108400
PMID: 9673247
Abstract
Campylobacter jejuni
, a microaerophilic, gram-negative bacterium, is a common cause of gastrointestinal disease in humans. Heat shock proteins are a group of highly conserved, coregulated proteins that play important roles in enabling organisms to cope with physiological stresses. The primary aim of this study was to characterize the heat shock response of
C. jejuni
. Twenty-four proteins were preferentially synthesized by
C. jejuni
immediately following heat shock. Upon immunoscreening of
Escherichia coli
transformants harboring a
Campylobacter
genomic DNA library, one recombinant plasmid that encoded a heat shock protein was isolated. The recombinant plasmid, designated pMEK20, contained an open reading frame of 1,119 bp that was capable of encoding a protein of 372 amino acids with a calculated molecular mass of 41,436 Da. The deduced amino acid sequence of the open reading frame shared similarity with that of DnaJ, which belongs to the Hsp-40 family of molecular chaperones, from a number of bacteria. An
E. coli dnaJ
mutant was successfully complemented with the pMEK20 recombinant plasmid, as judged by the ability of bacteriophage λ to form plaques, indicating that the
C. jejuni
gene encoding the 41-kDa protein is a functional homolog of the
dnaJ
gene from
E. coli
. The ability of each of two
C. jejuni dnaJ
mutants to form colonies at 46°C was severely retarded, indicating that DnaJ plays an important role in
C. jejuni
thermotolerance. Experiments revealed that a
C. jejuni
DnaJ mutant was unable to colonize newly hatched Leghorn chickens, suggesting that heat shock proteins play a role in vivo.
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Details
- Title
- Characterization of the Thermal Stress Response of Campylobacter jejuni
- Creators
- Michael E Konkel - Department of Microbiology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4233Bong J Kim - Department of Microbiology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4233John D Klena - Department of Microbiology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4233Colin R Young - Department of Microbiology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4233Richard Ziprin - Department of Microbiology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4233
- Publication Details
- Infection and immunity, Vol.66(8), pp.3666-3672
- Academic Unit
- Molecular Biosciences, School of
- Publisher
- American Society for Microbiology
- Identifiers
- 99900548473001842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article