Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 21, 2017; 23(23): 4158-4169
Published online Jun 21, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i23.4158
Helicobacter pylori BabA in adaptation for gastric colonization
Shamshul Ansari, Yoshio Yamaoka
Shamshul Ansari, Yoshio Yamaoka, Department of Environmental and Preventive Medicine, Oita University Faculty of Medicine, Yufu-City, Oita 879-5593, Japan
Yoshio Yamaoka, Department of Medicine-Gastroenterology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Author contributions: Yamaoka Y conceived the design of the manuscript; Ansari S searched the published articles, extracted the core information and prepared the initial draft of the manuscript; Yamaoka Y revised the draft of the manuscript.
Supported by (in part) grants from the National Institutes of Health, No. DK62813; the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) of Japan, No. 25293104, No. 26640114, No. 15H02657 and No. 16H05191 to Yamaoka Y; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Institutional Program for Young Researcher Overseas Visits to Yamaoka Y; the Strategic Funds for the Promotion of Science and Technology from Japan Science and Technology Agency to Yamaoka Y; and the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship Program to Ansari S.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no any conflict of interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Yoshio Yamaoka MD, PhD, Department of Environmental and Preventive Medicine, Oita University Faculty of Medicine, 1-1 Idaigaoka, Hasama-machi, Yufu-City, Oita 879-5593, Japan. yyamaoka@oita-u.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-97-5865740 Fax: +81-97-5865749
Received: January 28, 2017
Peer-review started: February 7, 2017
First decision: March 16, 2017
Revised: April 12, 2017
Accepted: June 1, 2017
Article in press: June 1, 2017
Published online: June 21, 2017
Processing time: 142 Days and 22.1 Hours
Abstract

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) as a causative agent of gastric complications, is well adapted for the colonization of gastric mucosa. Although the infectious process depends on several factors, the adhesion to the gastric mucosa is the first and important step. Among several outer membrane proteins, BabA is one of the significant protein involving in many inflammatory processes in addition to its role in the attachment for the persistent colonization. We performed a PubMed search using the key words: “babA”, “pylori”, “gastric complications”, “homologous recombination”, “slipped strand mispairing”; a total of 249 articles were displayed. Of these we mainly focused on articles with the full text in English and published between 2005 and 2016. H. pylori BabA is involved in binding with receptors; however, its synthesis is regulated by phase variation. In this review we confirm that H. pylori babA can be modulated at the molecular and functional levels to adapt to the stress within the gastro-intestinal tract.

Keywords: BabA; Gastric complications; Helicobacter pylori; Homologous recombination; Slipped strand mispairing

Core tip:Helicobacter pylori are well adapted to colonize the gastric mucosa. Although the infectious process depends on several factors, adhesion to the gastric mucosa is the first and critical step. Among outer membrane proteins, BabA is an important protein involved in many inflammatory processes in addition to playing a role in the aforementioned attachment process. In this review, we have summarized the current, published knowledge regarding its functional and molecular aspects by which the pathogen can attach to the host cell receptors.