Figure 3.

Impairment of biofilm formation mitigates pathogen virulence. (A) Relative ferric iron content in C. elegans lysates from worms exposed to PA14 biofilm mutants. Detailed procedure is described in Materials and Methods. (B) Sytox Orange stain in worms exposed to PA14 biofilm mutants visualized by RFP channel image merged with brightfield. (C) Host death among PA14 mutants was quantitatively compared by RFP fluorescence normalized to brightfield intensity. Relative host death in biofilm mutants was normalized to death observed in worms exposed to wild-type PA14. (D) C. elegans slow kill assay survival curve for PA14 biofilm mutants. Data presented in (B–D) are representative results from three biological replicates. Error bars in (A) represent SEM between three biological replicates. Error bars in (C) represent SEM between 12 technical replicates. Asterisks indicate significant difference between conditions (p-value < 0.01, based on Student's t-test).