Helicobacter pylori BabA in adaptation for gastric colonization

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.