Culturing Campylobacter hepaticus Strains

The C. hepaticus strains HV10^T, 19L^{11 (link)}, VICOCT18, WESTERN3, NSWJUNE19, SAJULY18 and DALE3^{51 (link)} were used in the study. These strains are representative isolates from independent SLD outbreaks from widely separated geographical locations in Australia. All C. hepaticus strains were stored at − 80 °C in 70% Brucella broth (BD BBL™) and 30% glycerol. C. hepaticus was routinely cultured on Brucella agar plates (Brucella broth (BD BBL™) + 1.5% agar (BD BBL™)) supplemented with 5% defibrinated horse blood (Equicel) (HBA) and cultured at 37 °C under microaerobic conditions (created using Campygen 3.5L gas generation packs (Oxoid)) in an anaerobic jar, for 96 h to recover C. hepaticus cells from − 80 °C stock or for 72 h if they were subcultured from HBA plates.