Cross-contamination from raw poultry or insufficient cooking

of poultry meat are common sources of infection. Enteric infections by this pathogen are often associated with a potent localized inflammatory response. Symptoms arising from infection include watery or bloody diarrhoea with abdominal cramping and fever. In addition, C. jejuni can be invasive and is associated with septicaemia, meningitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome [4] and more recently with immuno-proliferative disease [5]. C. jejuni virulence factors for human disease include flagella based chemotaxis, adhesin-based cellular adherence, host cell invasion and the elaboration of a heat labile cytolethal distending toxin (CLDT) [2, 6, 7] In previous SGC-CBP30 order studies we have additionally shown that a heat stable C. jejuni boiled cell extract (BCE) is able to activate the transcription factor NF-κB

(nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells) [8]. This signalling molecule is responsible for inducing the expression of a number of genes involved in inflammation and cell mediated immunity Cilengitide nmr [9], including chemokines capable of attracting leukocytes, resulting in inflammation. NF-κB is held inactive in the cytoplasm of a cell, whilst its nuclear localization domain is masked by inhibitory IκB proteins. If IκB is phosphorylated, Selleck MDV3100 leading to ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, then NF-κB is released to transport to the nucleus of the cell, where it affects transcription of κB-responsive promoters. Therefore products that activate

NF-κB can be presumed to have a strong role in triggering inflammation. Previous work has shown that live C. jejuni and a BCE can induce both NF-κB, and the synthesis and release of the chemokine interleukin-8 [8]. In order to identify a wider range of genes affected by C. jejuni products and assess the relative importance of Dolutegravir the NF-κB response we used microarray technologies to identify genes that were both up and down-regulated in HCA-7 cells after exposure to a C. jejuni BCE [8, 10]. Use of the Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) program suite enabled us to group co-regulated genes in order to identify the cellular signalling pathways activated in HCA-7 cells in response to C. jejuni BCE. The transcriptomic data were confirmed by real time quantitative PCR (RQ-PCR). Methods C. jejuni culture and preparation of BCE The type strain C. jejuni National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) 11168 was used throughout these experiments, since it was originally isolated from a patient with diarrhoea, its genome sequence is available and it has a well-characterized pathological phenotype [11]. It was incubated on blood-agar plates (Blood Agar Base CM0271 from Oxoid, Basingstoke, UK with 5%, v/v defibrinated horse blood) under micro-aerobic conditions for 24 h. and used to inoculate Nutrient Broth no. 2 (Oxoid CM0067, 600 ml in 1000 ml flask). Inoculated flasks were shaken at 140 rpm at 42°C for 16 h.