Fig 5.

(A) Pathogenicity of P. aeruginosa PAO1 and the apaH mutant in the lettuce leaf virulence assay. Bacterial viable cells (CFUs) per mg of lettuce midribs at three days post injection are shown. Two independent experiments were performed, each with five biological replicates. A representative picture of the infected midribs is shown for each strain. (B) Dose-dependent survival curves of G. mellonella larvae infected with different doses of PAO1 or ΔapaH cells. Lethal dose 90% (LD₉₀) and R² values are shown in the figure. (C) Survival of mice (n = 5 per group) challenged with intratracheal injection of 10⁷ CFUs of PAO1 or ΔapaH. (D) Total bacterial CFU in lungs or spleen from mice (n = 5 per group) intra-tracheally infected with 10⁷ CFU of PAO1 or ΔapaH and sacrificed within 24 h of infection (see Materials and methods for details). (E) Count of total leukocytes, polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN), macrophages, and lymphocytes in BALF from the mice described in panel D. Asterisks indicate statistically significant differences (*P < 0.05, *** P < 0.001) with respect to PAO1 (Mann-Whitney test for data in panels A, D, and E; Mantel-Cox test for data in panel C).