Figure 2. Deletion of BepE is sufficient for Bhe to induce cell fragmentation.

(A–C) Subconfluent monolayers of HUVECs were infected with MOI = 200 of the indicated bacterial strains. (B) Infected HUVECs were fixed at 48 h post infection followed by immunocytochemical staining and confocal laser scanning microscopy. F-actin is represented in red and DNA in blue (scale bar = 50 µm). (A) and (C) quantification of cell fragmentation at 48 h post infection was performed as described for Fig. 1C and D. The mean and SD of triplicate samples is presented. Statistical significance was determined using Student's t-test. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Data from one representative experiment (n = 3) are presented. (D) Schematic view of BepE_Bhe and N-terminal deletion mutants expressed in Bartonella from a plasmid. (E) Protein levels of the BepE_Bhe mutants shown in figure by overexpression in Bhe ΔbepE. The anti-Myc western blot was obtained from total lysate of corresponding Bartonella strains.