Fig. 4.

Quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR) of antioxidant genes. Shown are the flaA-normalized transcript copy numbers (assuming 10,000 copies of flaA mRNA) for T. pallidum genes involved in oxidative stress protection following harvest from rabbit testes (black bars) or subsequent cocultivation with rabbit epithelial cells (white bars). Bars represent the means ± SEM for four independent experiments, each analyzed in duplicate. The asterisk indicates a significant difference (p < 0.05 using the Student t-test) between rabbit-harvested and cocultivated transcript copy numbers.