Fig. 7

Decreased motility and flagellar breakage for a Campylobacter ID-Rod-Stretch deletion mutant strain. a Motility for a wild-type strain, a ΔflgE mutant strain, a ΔflgE mutant strain encoding an inserted copy of the wild-type flgE gene, and a ΔflgE mutant strain encoding a gene for a FlgE mutant protein deleted for amino acid residues 46–66, inoculated into Mueller–Hinton motility media. The plate was incubated at 42 °C for 24 h. Western blotting analysis of FlgE (b) and FlaA (flagellin) (c) proteins exported into the culture supernatant, and FlgE (d) and FlaA (e) protein synthesis for whole cells, using polyclonal antibodies. Cultures of the strains were grown in Mueller–Hinton broth at 42 °C to stationary phase. Relative band densities (%) compared to wild-type are indicated. Electron micrographs at 2000× magnification of C. jejuni expressing wild-type FlgE (f) and FlgE Δ(46–66) (g). Scale bars, 1 μm. h Electron micrograph at 25,000× magnification of flagella broken at the hook for cells expressing FlgE Δ(46–66). Scale bar, 50 nm. i Quantification of flagella. Cells with and without flagella and surrounding broken flagella were counted at 1000× magnification for at least 30 cells on three carbon grids for the wild-type and FlgE Δ(46–66) strains. The numbers were normalized to 30 cells per grid and mean average numbers per grid and standard deviations are shown