Molecular Genetics of Campylobacter

Campylobacter jejuni is the major cause of food-borne enteric disease in many industrialised countries. Campylobacter is a natural inhabitant of the gastrointestinal tract of birds and transmission is commonly via contamination of food with uncooked or under cooked poultry. Despite widespread recognition of its importance as a major source of food-borne illness there is a paucity of information about of how the organism causes disease and how it survives under the various different environmental conditions essential for its transmission and infectivity. <P>
Our research on pathogenesis and stress response exploits the recently published genome sequence and state-of-the-art technologies (microarrays, bioinformatics tools and proteomics) to investigate the function of genes involved in these processes. Our research on Campylobacter is likely to create new opportunities for the eradication and control of Campylobacter in the food chain and will have important implications for the development of vaccines, anti- infectives and antimicrobials.