Survival curves of mice challenged subcutaneously (SC) with spores or vegetative bacteria. A/J mice (A, B) or C57BL/6J (C, D) mice were injected SC with 2 × 103 spores (A, n=10), 20 vegetative cells (B, n=8), 2 × 107 spores (C, n=5) or 1 × 105 vegetative cells (D, n=5). The survival curves following lgt mutant spore challenge differed with statistical significance (by the logrank test) from curves of the wild-type and complemented strains for both A/J challenges (p < 0.0001), as well as C57BL/6J challenges (p< 0.05), while no significant differences were found in vegetative challenges.