FIG. 2.

Caspase 1-deficient mice have transiently elevated pathogen burdens early after infection with B. burgdorferi. The pathogen burdens in the urinary bladders of individual mice infected for 9 days (A) or 14 days (B) were determined by quantitative PCR as described in Materials and Methods. The copy number of the B. burgdorferi (Bb) recA gene was normalized to 1 ng of the mouse β-actin gene product. These results are representative of three separate experiments performed with four or five mice per group in each experiment. The pathogen burden calculated for each mouse is the average of duplicates from two separate assays. The differences between the WT and caspase 1^−/− pathogen burdens at day 9 were significant (P = 0.0016, Mann-Whitney test).