FIG. 3.

Infection of BALB/c mice with the following B. suis strains over a period of 56 days. Wild-type B. suis 1330 containing plasmid pBBR1MCS (•), the ΔeryC deletion mutant with plasmid pBBR1MCS (▵), and ΔeryC complemented with pBBR1-eryC (▴). (A) Survival of B. suis strains in the spleens. Viable bacteria were counted at different time points, and results are represented as means ± SD. The infection dose of 5 × 10⁴ viable bacteria for each strain is indicated by an arrow. (B) Weights of the infected spleens removed for the determination of viable Brucella counts. In both panels, statistically significant differences between the wild-type and the ΔeryC mutant were marked by asterisks (*, P ≤ 0.05; ***, P ≤ 0.001).