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A team at Griffith’s Institute for Glycomics identified a unique sensory structure that is able to bind host-specific sugar and is present on particularly virulent strains of Campylobacter jejuni.
In their paper A direct-sensing galactose chemoreceptor recently evolved in invasive strains of Campylobacter jejuni published in Nature Communications this week, the team explain that the ability to cause disease depends on the ability of bacterial cells to move towards their target host cells.
This movement is determined by specialised structures on the bacterial cells called sensory receptors that sense chemicals in their environment.
It is the first known finding of a bacterial sensor that can bind sugar directly.
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