The helical shape of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which causes many ulcers and gastric cancer, is critical in its ability to colonise the stomach.

Scientists have suspected that H. pylori’s ability to survive in the hostile acidic environment of the stomach owed to its corkscrew shape – but not why.

Now researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, Washington, have found proof that the bacterium’s shape allows it to survive amid gastric juices and to infect the stomach.

“By understanding how the bug colonises the stomach, we can think about targeting therapy to prevent infection in the first place,” said microbiologist Nina Salama, one of the authors of the new study appearing in the journal Cell.

“H. pylori lives in such an unusual environment [the stomach], which people for a long time thought was sterile,” said Salama. And until the early 1980s, no one suspected that a bug could cause stomach ulcers and gastritis.

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