Fig 4. Validation of equivalent bacterial load of P_flaB-luc and P_ospC-luc infected Balb/c mice.

Skin samples from adjacent to the inoculation site of Balb/c mice infected with 10⁵ P_flaB-luc or P_ospC-luc on day 10 (A) or day 21 (B) following inoculation were harvested for qPCR analysis of borrelial genomes (recA) per copies of 10⁶ β-actin. Horizontal bars denotes average copies of recA per 10⁶ β-actin and error bars represent standard error. Statistical analysis using the Mann-Whitney test indicated a lack of significance between the P_flaB-luc and P_ospC-luc at day 10 and 21 post-infection with p-values of 0.2222 and 0.9444, respectively.