Figure 2.

The influence of M. hominis MPM2 on T. vaginalis growth curves. The starting point for both growth experiments was 400,000 parasite cells/ml and data were collected at indicated times. The rate of replication of T. vaginalis associated with M. hominis is higher than the parasite alone, suggesting an important influence by the bacteria on the parasite physiology. The results represent the average of three independent experiments and error bars represent standard deviations. Statistical significance was tested by Student t-test and ^*p < 0.05 was considered significant. The growth curves for T. vaginalis G3 and T. vaginalis in symbiosis with M. hominis MPM2 were obtained by fitting the data using a non-linear regression.