Fig 4.
Role of in vivo-activated, biofilm growth-associated genes in endocarditis virulence. A total of 109 CFU of each E. faecalis strain was intravenously injected into New Zealand White rabbits following the induction of aortic valve damage, as described in Materials and Methods. Vegetations and heart valve leaflets were harvested at 4 days postinoculation. The log10 valve bacterial load is shown for wild-type strain OG1RF (n = 8), the OG1RF ΔproB strain (n = 10), the OG1RF ΔebrA strain (n = 4), the OG1RF Δeep strain (n = 6), and the OG1RF Δeep(pMSP3535-eep) strain (n = 5). Horizontal bars denote the arithmetic means of the log10-transformed values. ∗, P = 0.0367 for OG1RF versus the ΔproB strain; ∗∗, P = 0.003 for OG1RF versus the Δeep strain; ∗∗∗, P = 0.0446 for the Δeep strain versus the Δeep(pMSP3535-eep) strain.