Figure 6. VicK has a significant impact on transcription of known ATR-related genes in S. mutans.

qRT-PCR was performed to reveal fold-change in gene expression at pH 5.5 versus 7.5 with cDNAs derived from S. mutans UA159 (solid black bars) and a vicK insertion-deletion mutant (SmuvicK) (striped bars). Error bars represent ± std. errors of the average expression values derived from at least 3 independent experiments. Student t-tests confirm that all genes are significantly down-regulated in the VicK mutant relative to the UA159 wild-type progenitor strain (p<0.001).