Analysis of the role of the TAT protein translocation system in Campylobacter jejuni

有些细菌进入我们吃的食物，导致食物中毒。其中一些细菌很常见，但通常在烹饪过程中被杀死。当鸡肉没有煮熟时，其中一种被称为空肠弯曲杆菌的细菌就会产生特别的问题。如果我们能够了解空肠杆菌在鸡体内生长的原因，并降低鸡尸体的污染水平，这将有助于减少对人类健康的风险。在鸡的肠道中，氧浓度非常低，空肠梭菌必须适应这种环境来进行新陈代谢。该项目旨在了解这种适应中需要的某些蛋白质是如何通过一种特殊类型的输出系统到达它们的最终位置的，这些蛋白质通常在细胞外起作用。我们将试图找出当细胞被阻止输出这些蛋白质时会发生什么，以及其中一些蛋白质的功能是什么。这些结果应该有助于我们更好地理解这些类型的输出蛋白在弯曲杆菌的整体生物学中所起的作用，甚至可能确定特定的干预目标，这些干预目标可能在未来允许控制禽肠道中细菌的生长。

Some bacteria get into the food that we eat and cause food-poisoning. Some of these bacteria are quite common but are usually killed during cooking. When chicken meat is not cooked properly, one of these types of bacteria, called Campylobacter jejuni, is a particular problem. If we can understand what allows C.jejuni to grow in chickens and reduce the level of contamination of chicken carcasses, this will help reduce the scale of the risk to human health. In the chicken gut, the oxygen concentrations are very low and C. jejuni has to adapt it's metabolism to this environment. This project is aimed at understanding how certain proteins which are needed in this adaptation and which often function outside the cell, get to their final location using a special type of export system. We will try to find out what happens when the cell is prevented from exporting these proteins, and what the functions of some of them are. The results should help us to understand better the role that these types of exported proteins play in the overall biology of campylobacter and may even identify specific targets for intervention that might in the future allow the control of the growth of the bacteria in the avian gut.