7 fold increase in osmotic stress conditions (data not shown). Therefore, the 16S rRNA gene was again used as the reference to see more determine the change in transcription levels of virulence-associated genes induced by stress relative to bacterial cells in the absence of any stress. As shown in Figure  2, the transcription of dnaJ www.selleckchem.com/products/tpx-0005.html and ciaB was not affected by heat stress and only slightly altered after exposure to the other stresses. A modest up-regulation was observed under oxidative stress (~2.7 and 2 fold

for ciaB and dnaJ, respectively, p < 0.05) while a modest down-regulation (~2.8 to 3.2 fold, p < 0.01) was observed for both genes under low nutrient or osmotic stresses. The transcription of htrA was moderately up-regulated under oxidative stress and slightly down-regulated under low nutrient stress, but the change was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). In contrast, transcription of htrA was up-regulated 2.5 fold under heat stress (p = 0.03) and down-regulated ~10 fold under osmotic stress (p < 0.01). Figure 2 qRT-PCR analysis of the impact of the various stresses on transcription of virulence-associated genes of C. jejuni . Total RNA was isolated, and the expression of ciaB, dnaJ and htrA was measured immediately after exposure to each stress. All data were normalized to the level of expression of the 16S rRNA gene and are presented relatively to the

non-stress control. Therefore, the non-stressed condition has YM155 mouse a fold value of 1. Data are representative of three independent experiments from three RNA extracts. Overall, the qRT-PCR experiments showed that the transcription of the three virulence-associated genes chosen was only slightly up-regulated under heat and oxidative stresses, but tended to be down-regulated

Farnesyltransferase under low nutrient and osmotic stresses, with htrA showing the most down-regulation in response to osmotic stress. Effect of htrA on the uptake of C. jejuni by A. castellanii and its intracellular survival We showed above that the transcription of at least one of the few virulence-associated genes tested (htrA) was affected by osmotic stress at a level that could be biologically significant (10 fold). Transcriptional regulation of virulence-associated genes upon pre-exposure to stress may affect interactions of C. jejuni with host cells, including phagocytosis and the ability of C. jejuni to survive in host cells after internalization. To determine whether this was the case for interactions with amoeba, we tested the biological importance of the stress-related gene for which we had observed the largest transcriptional variations (htrA) using the htrA mutant that was previously described [39]. Both bacterial uptake and intracellular survival were measured after interactions of 2 × 108 bacteria with amoeba at a multiplicity of infection of 100 for 3 h at 25°C (see Methods section for more details).