Research Publications (Food Safety)

Campylobacter species are the leading cause of bacterial diarrhoea worldwide and consumption of contaminated chicken meat is the most common route of infection. Chickens can be infected with multiple strains of Campylobacter and during the infection cycle this pathogen must survive a wide variety of environments.

The control of bacterial contaminants on meat is a key area of interest in the food industry. Bacteria are exposed to a variety of stresses during broiler processing which challenge bacterial structures and metabolic pathways causing death or sublethal injury. To counter these stresses, bacteria possess robust response systems that can induce shifts in the transcriptome and proteome to enable survival.

The ubiquitous unicellular eukaryote, Acanthamoeba, is known to play a role in the survival and dissemination of Campylobacter jejuni. C. jejuni is the leading cause of bacterial foodborne gastroenteritis world-wide and is a major public health problem. The ability of C.

Microbial genomes are highly adaptable, with mobile genetic elements (MGEs) such as integrative conjugative elements (ICEs) mediating the dissemination of new genetic information throughout bacterial populations. This is countered by defence mechanisms such as CRISPR-Cas systems, which limit invading MGEs by sequence-specific targeting.

  Campylobacter jejuni   strains that produce sialylated lipooligosaccharides (LOS) can cause the immune-mediated disease Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS).

Introduction. The identification of enteropathogens is critical for the clinical management of patients with suspected gastrointestinal infection. The FLOW multiplex PCR system (FMPS) is a semi-automated platform (FLOW System, Roche) for multiplex real-time PCR analysis.

Phase variation (PV), involving stochastic switches in gene expression, is exploited by the human pathogen Campylobacter jejuni to adapt to different environmental and host niches. Phase-variable genes of C. jejuni modulate expression of multiple surface determinants, and hence may influence host colonization.

Numerous aminoglycoside resistance genes have been reported in Campylobacter spp. often resembling those from Gram-positive bacterial species and located in transferable genetic elements with other resistance genes. We discovered a new streptomycin (STR) resistance gene in
Campylobacter

Campylobacter concisus is an oral bacterium that has been shown to be associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In this study we examined clusters of oral C. concisus strains isolated from patients with IBD and healthy controls by analysing the six housekeeping genes that we previously described. In addition, we investigated the population structure of C. concisus strains.

The foodborne bacterial pathogen Campylobacter jejuni is an obligate microaerophile, which is exposed to atmospheric oxygen during transmission through the food chain. Survival under aerobic conditions requires the concerted control of oxidative stress systems, which in C. jejuni are intimately connected with iron metabolism via the PerR and Fur regulatory proteins. Here we have characterised the roles of C.