Figure 6.

The role of ComE in nasopharyngeal colonization. (A) Nasopharyngeal colonization of Babl/c mice infected with the D39-WT and the D39ΔcomE mutant. Mice (n = 18) were intranasally challenged with 30 μl pneumococci (3.0 × 10⁶ CFU). Colonized bacteria were harvested from nasal lavage fluid and enumerated by plating serial dilutions. The graphs show log10 CFUs (SD) recovered from nasopharynx of three Balb/c mice for D39-WT or D39ΔcomE mutant. (B) Comparison of the number of colonized bacteria between in D39-WT and D39ΔcomE mutant group from the results represented in (A). Statistical difference was determined by unpaired two-tailed Student's t-test. ^***P < 0.001; ns, no significant difference.