Fig. 3

Virulence and genomic differences across Campylobacter isolates from patients with GERD and metaplasia. A Principal coordinate analysis of the levels of 34 cytokines and chemokines produced by primary macrophages upon infection with Campylobacter isolates. Macrophages were infected with 10 different C. concisus and 1 C. rectus isolate from this patient cohort. Data was log(x + 1) transformed and a Euclidean distance matrix generated. Vectors were generated using a correlation value of 0.3 for both Pearson and Spearman correlations. B Intracellular levels of Campylobacter isolates within primary human macrophages. Levels were calculated using a gentamicin protection assay at MOI 100. ESOS44-1 and ESOS44-4 were significantly different to all other isolates except for ESOS14-1, ESOS33-1, and each other (ANOVA, Tukey’s). No other comparisons were significant. Red: isolates from MET, orange: from GERD, and green: from NORM. C Average nucleotide identity across the 10 C. concisus isolates’ genomes. A separate analysis including C. rectus showed an ANI of 71.02–71.39%. D Circular representation of the 10 C. concisus genomes using GView. GS1 strains, red; GS2 strains, green. E Syntenic proteins unique to GS1 strains as compared to GS2 strains, including the tellurite resistance protein TehA. F Prevalence of the TehA operon in shotgun metagenomics data of esophageal mucosal brushings from patients in the early stages of the EAC cascade. Reads aligning to the TehA operon within the data were identified using BWA-MEM. G C. concisus GS1 isolates and C. rectus have enhanced intracellular survival in primary macrophages when compared to C. concisus GS2 isolates, and the former can be delineated by the presence of six syntenic proteins including TehA