Post-Transcriptional Regulation of Virulence in Campylobacter Jejuni

Campylobacter jejuni is one of the leading bacterial causes of gastroenteritis in the United States, infecting approximately two million persons annually, and a subset of Campylobacter-infected persons subsequently develop the acute paralytic disease Guillain-Barr¿ Syndrome (GBS). The pathogenesis of Campylobacter infections is severely understudied relative to other enteric infections such as those caused by Salmonella and E. coli, and precisely how Campylobacter causes disease is largely unknown. Campylobacter has a relatively small repertoire of gene regulation systems, and it is unclear how it is able to fine tune gene expression to result in a productive infection of humans. <P> This work outlines the characterization of a novel, posttranscriptional form of virulence gene regulation that we recently were the first to begin characterizing in Campylobacter.