Infect Immun 2001,69(9):5921–5924.PubMedCrossRef 39. Laemmli UK: Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4. Nature 1970,227(5259):680–685.PubMedCrossRef 40. Appelmelk BJ, Shiberu B, Trinks C, Tapsi N, Zheng PY, Verboom T, Maaskant J, Hokke CH, Schiphorst WE, Blanchard D, et al.: Phase variation in Helicobacter pylori lipopolysaccharide. Infect Immun 1998,66(1):70–76.PubMed Authors’ contributions EAS carried out all of the electrophoretic and blotting experiments and drafted the initial manuscript. CJD aided with experimental work and participated in the design and coordination of the

study and helped to draft the manuscript. IDG and JCW provided SCH727965 solubility dmso resources, aided in determination of the LOS structures with APM and helped draft the manuscript. APM and VK conceived this study, participated in its design, and the coordination and writing of

the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background The type III secretion system (T3SS) is possessed by gram-negative bacteria, especially those occurring in animal and plant pathogens, e.g. Yersinia, Shigella, Salmonella, Pseudomonas and Escherichia species [1–3]. The T3SS secretes and translocates effector proteins into the cytosol of eukaryotic cells, thus contributing to bacterial virulence against the host [1]. While the T3SS apparatus is well conserved in these bacteria, the specific properties of the Saracatinib molecular weight effectors which are

secreted via T3SS and symptomatic effects caused by the effectors on the host organism vary widely [1]. Vibrios are gram-negative γ-proteobacteria which are ubiquitous in marine and estuarine environments [4, 5]. Several of the more than 100 Vibrio species are pathogens for fish, shellfish, coral, and mammals [6], and Vibrio parahaemolyticus was the first species in which the presence of T3SS was reported [7]. V. parahaemolyticus is a cause of food-borne buy ABT-263 gastroenteritis in humans, and almost GBA3 all strains isolated from diarrheal patients produce the thermostable direct hemolysin (TDH) and/or the TDH-related hemolysin (TRH), which are encoded by the tdh and trh genes, respectively [8–10]. V. parahaemolyticus strains, which exhibit the Kanagawa phenomenon (KP), a beta-hemolysis detectable on a special blood agar (Wagatsuma agar) [11], possess two tdh genes, tdhA and tdhS, but not the trh gene [10, 12, 13]. In contrast, KP-negative clinical V. parahaemolyticus strains possess the trh gene only or both the trh and tdh genes. Genome sequencing of the KP-positive V. parahaemolyticus strain RIMD2210633 demonstrated that it possesses two sets of the genes for T3SS on chromosomes 1 and 2 (T3SS1 and T3SS2, respectively) [7]. It has further been demonstrated that T3SS2 is involved in enterotoxicity of the organism, and is considered to be an important factor in the pathogenicity of diarrheal illness [14].