Fig 2.

Characterization of adhesion factors in the pilU mutant. Immunoblots show the expression levels of PilC, PilT, PilE, and Opa in the wild-type FAM20 (WT), pilU mutant (ΔpilU), and complemented (ΔpilU_C) strains. Controls for the PilC immunoblot were FAM20 mutants expressing only one defined PilC variant, i.e., lanes PilC1+/PilC2− and PilC1−/PilC2+. The control for the PilT immunoblot was the PilT-deficient mutant (ΔpilT). Whole-cell lysates were analyzed in a 2-color Western blot and visualized with anti-PilC, anti-PilT, anti-pili, and anti-Opa antibodies in combination with a monoclonal anti-EF-Tu antibody. The EF-Tu band intensity was used as a loading control and used for normalization. R.I. denotes the relative EF-Tu-normalized band intensity for at least three separate experiments, set to 1.0 for the wild type. Asterisks denote statistically significant differences relative to the wild type (P < 0.05; Student's t test).