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Infect. Immun. doi:10.1128/IAI.00321-08
Copyright (c) 2008, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

The sialylated lipo-oligosaccharide outer core of Campylobacter jejuni is an important determinant for epithelial cell invasion

Departments of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and Pediatrics, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Institute for Biological Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: r.louwen{at}erasmusmc.nl.

	Abstract

Campylobacter jejuni is a frequent cause of bacterial gastroenteritis world wide. Lipo-oligosaccharide (LOS) has been identified as an important virulence factor that may play a role in microbial adhesion and invasion. Here we specifically address if LOS sialylation affects the interaction of C. jejuni with human epithelial cells. To this aim, 14 Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) and 34 enteritis-associated strains, the 81-176 reference strain and 6 Penner serotype strains, were tested for invasion into two epithelial cell lines.

C. jejuni strains expressing sialylated LOS (class A, B and C) invaded significantly more than non-sialylated LOS strains of classes D and E (p < 0.0001). To further explore this observation, we inactivated the LOS sialyltransferase (Cst-II) via knock-out mutagenesis in three GBS-associated C. jejuni strains expressing sialylated LOS (GB2, GB11 and GB19). All knock-out strains displayed significantly reduced invasion compared to the respective wild types. Complementation of a cst-II mutant strain restored LOS sialylation and reset the invasiveness to wild type levels. Finally, formalin-fixed wild type strains GB2, GB11 and GB19, but not the isogenic cst-II mutants that lack sialic acid, were able to inhibit epithelial invasion of viable GB2, GB11 and GB19 strains. We conclude that sialylation of the LOS outer core significantly contributes to C. jejuni epithelial invasion and may thus play a role in subsequent post-infectious pathologies.