Understanding how mutability facilitates survival of alternating selection and bottlenecks by the major food-borne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni

空肠弯曲菌是引起胃肠炎的主要食物源性致病菌。作为鸟类胃肠道中的一种寄生生物，它通过鸟类之间的传播瓶颈以及通过肉类产品的污染而传播给人类，受到许多快速振荡的选择压力。C.空肠避免这些瓶颈的影响并存活以引起人肠粘膜中的炎症反应的实验突出了局部超变束的关键适应性反应以避免严格选择性和非选择性瓶颈的存活。本计画将结合联合收割机与实验资料，以探讨超变重复序列的变异性与C.空肠。通过使用新的高通量循环测定来评估相变量转换，以告知局部超突变如何有助于C.空肠跨越传播屏障。

Campylobacter jejuni is a major food-borne cause of gastroenteritis. A commensal organism in the gastrointestinal tract of birds it is subject to numerous rapid oscillating selection pressures through transmission bottlenecks, both between birds and to humans through the contamination of meat products. The ability of C. jejuni to avoid the influence of these bottlenecks and survive to cause the inflammatory response in the human gut mucosa highlights the key adaptive response of local hypermutable tracts to avoid both survival of stringent selective and non-selective bottlenecks. This project will combine both computational modelling and experimental data to examine the effect of mutability of hypermutable repeat tracts and the survival of C. jejuni. Through the use of novel high throughput cyclic assays to assess phase variable switching to inform computation modelling of how local hypermutability contributes to the survival of C. jejuni across transmission barriers.