Figure 3

Phenotypic difference in adherence of three ST-21 C. jejuni strains from human, animal and food source to mammalian cells. Human colonic epithelial cells (CaCo-2), chicken macrophage-like cells (HD-11) and porcine intestinal epithelial cells (IPEC-J2) were infected in triplicates with biotin-labelled bacteria at an MOI of 200 and coincubated for 1 h (Methods). Each bar represents the mean ± standard deviation number of adherent bacteria of one C. jejuni strain from triplicate measurement in one representative experiment. Statistical differences in adherence were evaluated using a Student's t test. A p value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant (* p ≤ 0.05, ** p ≤ 0.01, *** p ≤ 0.001). h = human, ch = chicken, f = food.