Pellets were resuspended in 1 ml of Tri Reagent (Sigma-Aldrich, UK) to which 0.2 ml chloroform (Sigma-Aldrich, UK) was added, mixed by vortexing and equilibrated at room temperature for 10 min. After centrifugation at 12000gfor 15 min the aqueous phase was removed and applied to Qiagen’s RNeasy Mini columns for RNA purification according to the manufacturer’s protocol. DNA removal was ensured by treatment with DNA-free

(Ambion, UK) and the quality and quantity of RNA was checked using the Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer (Agilent Technologies, UK). Construction of theC. jejuniDNA microarray Internal DNA fragments corresponding to unique segments of the individual open reading frames (ORFs) in the annotated genome sequence of strain NCTC 11168 [45] were

amplified by PCR using gene-specific primers (Sigma Genosys ORFmer set), then purified and spotted on GAPSII slides (Corning, USA) using an in-house check details Stanford designed microarrayer as previously ACY-1215 chemical structure described [46]. Transcriptome analysis Labelled cDNA was prepared from 15 μg RNA using Stratascript RT (Stratagene, UK) with the direct incorporation of Cy3 and Cy5 dyes (Amersham, UK), applied to microarrays, washed, scanned and statistically analysed as described by Holmeset al. [47]. Dye-swapping indicated selleck inhibitor that equal dye incorporation occurred. In short, duplicate microarray experiments were performed for each of the triplicate RNA samples and each ORF was present on the microarray SPTLC1 in triplicate. The normalised data from each microarray were unified in one single dataset and reanalysed to identify the differentially expressed genes. Full methodology of the statistical analysis of the data was previously described [47]. Production of AI-2in vitro AI-2 was synthesised essentially as described by Winzeret al., [26]. 2 mMS-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH, purchased from Sigma) in 10 mM sodium phosphate buffer, pH 7·7, was converted enzymatically toS-ribosylhomocysteine (SRH) through incubation with purifiedE. coliPfs enzyme (100 μg ml-1) at 37°C for 1 h. Subsequently, purifiedE. coliLuxS (500 μg ml-1) was added, and the reaction mixture incubated for a further 2 h. SAH solutions were bubbled with

helium before addition of the enzymes and the reaction mixtures were incubated in an anaerobic cabinet to prevent oxidation of the reaction products. Levels of synthesised AI-2 were measured indirectly by quantification of homocysteine generated via the LuxS reaction. Homocysteine concentrations were determined using the Ellmans reagent as previously described [26]. AI-2 negative controls, for addition to control cultures, were prepared as follows: SRH was synthesised enzymatically as described above and adjusted to the concentration calculated for the AI-2in vitroreaction, by dilution with reaction buffer and addition of homocysteine and adenine contained within the same buffer (also yielding the concentrations calculated to be present in the AI-2in vitroreaction).