Figure 6.

Fimbrial interactions with THP-1 macrophages. Phagocytosis (white bars) was measured after 20 min of infection. Gentamycin was added to medium overnight to assess the survival (gray bars). (A) Mutant strains with deletion of each fimbrial gene cluster were used for this assay. (B) Native promoter and operon was cloned on low-copy pWSK29 vector and transformed into afimbrial ISP1820. Results are expressed as the mean ± SEM of at least three distinct experiments performed in triplicates. ^*p < 0.05; ^**p < 0.01; ^***p < 0.001.