Fig. 4.

Evidence of cattle associated phenotype variation in C. jejuni. (A) Summary of cattle adaptation based on comparative genomics indicating biological pathways associated with deletion of the glycosylation gene block. (B–G) Phenotype assays comparing two WT chicken specialist strains, id69 and id424 (Dataset S1) and isogenic glycosylation gene block deletion mutants (id69ΔGB and id424ΔGB), and natural specialist and generalist strains from cattle and chicken. (B, D, and F) Chicken-associated lineage mutants show a marked decrease in cellular hydrophobicity, biofilm formation, and autoagglutination compared to WT strains. In assays of natural strain collections, cattle specialist strains show significantly greater mean ammonium sulfate concentration (millimolar) indicating decreased cell hydrophobicity (C), and significantly decreased ability to from biofilms measured as optical absorbance (at 570 nm) (E). (G) No difference was observed in autoagglutination in specialist strains from cattle and chicken, but generalist strains from cattle showed decreased ability to autoagglutinate. Significance was tested using Mann–Whitney U test: *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, and ****P < 0.001. The horizontal line in each plot represents the mean value.