Campylobacter jejuni transcriptomic response to benzylisothiocyanate

Campylobacter jejuni is a widespread pathogen responsible for most of the food-borne gastrointestinal diseases in Europe. For pathogen control in the food industry, the use of natural antimicrobial molecules is a promising strategy to avoid antibiotic treatments. Isothiocyanates are natural antimicrobial compounds which also display anti-cancer activity. Several studies described the chemoprotective effect of isothiocyanates on eukaryotic cells, but the antimicrobial mechanism is still poorly understood. We investigated the early cellular response of C. jejuni to benzylisothiocyanate (BITC) by both transcriptomic and physiological (respirometry, ATP content measurements and isolations of aggregated proteins). To characterize the transcriptomic early response to benzylisothiocyanate, C. jejuni NCTC11168 were grown in 100 ml flasks containing 25 ml of MEMα medium plus 20 mM sodium pyruvate. At mid-log phase, 2µg/mL benzylisothiocyanate in ethanol, or the same volume of ethanol (control) was added to the flasks for 10 or 15 min prior to total RNA extraction and purification. Samples were then processed for microarray hybridization. Microarray data was acquired from two (10 minutes assay) or three (15 minutes assay) independent biological replicates and 6 to 9 technical replicates for each biological replicate (total number of measurement per gene = 42).