Host genomic regions susceptible to damage during H. pylori infection

We identify here host genomic regions that are more likely to be damaged during an infection with the human gastirc pathogen Helicobacter pylori and characterize underlying features of them. By ChIP-seq we obtained global information about the localization of the DNA-damage marker H2AXpS139. We used 20 ng of immunoprecipitated DNA of the human gastric cell line AGS to produce 240 mio sequence reads in total and compared the damage-pattern of 6 h and 19 h infected cells with that of 10 Gy irradiated ones. While the overall levesl of DNA damage wetre similar in terms of broken DNA and accumulation of H2AXpS139, infection-induced damage clearly accumulates towards the ends of chromosomal arms, namely telomere-proximal and close to centromeres, it also enriches mainly in genic and especially in transcribed regions. We show, taht this damage pattern is unique to the infection, occurs also in human non-transformed gastric epithelial cells and shows some correlation with previously identified cancer-related genes. Overall design: Examination of a DNA-damage induced histone modification from four different conditions.