Fig. 1.

Effect of Helicobacter pylori infection of AGS cells on transfected HKα promoter activity and on IL-8 secretion. AGS cells were transfected with a 206-bp HKα-promoter-Luc reporter construct, and independently infected 24 h later (MOI = 50, 6 h) with wild-type H. pylori or ΔcagA, Δcagζ, Δcagε, Δcagβ, or ΔcagZ isogenic mutants. CagA delivery into the cells was assessed by phospho-CagA immunoblotting, IL-8 secretion was measured by ELISA, and the transcriptional activity of the HKα promoter construct was measured by luminometry. Data are shown as means ± SD, n = 3. Presence of phospho-CagA in corresponding AGS cell lysate immunoblots is indicated as *, and β-actin served as a gel loading control.