BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Predicting H. pylori outcomes

December 17, 2001 8:00 AM UTC

To infect humans, H. pylori attaches to gastric epithelial cells and injects the CagA protein, which undergoes phosphorylation in the human cells. H. pylori that express CagA trigger an elongation and spreading of human cells known as the hummingbird phenotype.

To determine whether phosphorylated CagA is necessary for H. pylori to produce such changes in host cells, scientists with the Institute for Genetic Medicine at Hokkaido University (Sapporo, Japan) transfected human gastric epithelial cells with a mutant form of CagA. The researchers altered the amino acid sequence of phosphorylation sites, making them phosphorylation-resistant...