All experiments reported in this paper were done on the LSH100 strain of H. pylori, a derivative of the human clinical isolate G27 (38 (link), 57 (link)) and its isogenic mutant with a straight rod shape, LSH100 Δcsd6 (26 (link), 28 (link)). The culture procedure was identical to that used by Martinez et al. (28 (link)) and is described briefly here. Frozen aliquots of bacteria were grown on Brucella agar plates with 5% horse blood (BD Biosciences) for 2 days, after which, they were restreaked onto new plates. After 2 to 5 days, the grown cells were transferred into BB10 containing Brucella broth (BD Biosciences) with 10% heat-inactivated fetal bovine serum (GIBCO) and left to grow overnight under constant agitation. Both cultures in agar plate and BB10 were kept in an incubator at 37°C under microaerophilic conditions (6 to 16% oxygen and 2 to 10% carbon dioxide; BD Biosciences GasPak EZ Campy Container System Sachets).