Role of DksA in the pathogenesis and physiology of Campylobacter jejuni.

DksA is well-known for its regulatory role in the transcription of ribosomal RNA and genes involved in amino acid synthesis in many bacteria. DksA is also reported to control expression of virulence genes in pathogenic bacteria. Here, we elucidated the roles of the DksA-like protein (CJJ81176_0160, Cj0125c) in the pathogenesis of Campylobacter jejuni. Like in other bacteria, transcription of stable RNA was repressed by DksA under stressful conditions in C. jejuni. Transcriptomic and proteomic analyses of C. jejuni 81-176 and its isogenic dksA mutant showed differential expression of many genes involved in iron-related metabolism, flagellar synthesis and amino acid metabolism. Also the dksA mutant of C. jejuni demonstrated a decreased ability to invade into intestinal cells and to induce release of interleukin-8 from intestinal cells. These results suggest the DksA-like protein plays an important regulatory role in the physiology and virulence of C. jejuni. Keywords: dksA mutation of Campylobacter jejuni The design utilized a commercially available two color microarray slide for the enture transcriptome of Campylobacter jejuni. Six hybridizations were performed each with independently extracted samples of either C. jejuni wildtype of C. jejuni dksA mutant cDNA samples. A dye swap was utilized to help minimize dye dependent bias. Thus there were six biological replicates of each sample.