Figure 3.

Effect of C5a stimulating renal tubular epithelial cell (RTEC) on bacterial transmigration through the monolayer of RTEC. Bacterial transmigration in RTEC that had been pre-treated with or without C5a (10 nM) for 24 h, then incubated with or without bacteria up to 3 h. (A) Transmigrated bacteria recovered from the lower chamber of RTEC cultures, evaluated by plate count assay. Data were analyzed by two-way ANOVA with multiple comparisons (n = 4 individual wells per group). (B–D) Epithelial barrier damage, evaluated at 2 h after incubation with bacteria by reduction of tight junction marker ZO-1 expression. (B) Western blot analysis for ZO-1 in RTEC. Data were analyzed by unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-test (n = 3 individual images per group). (C) Representative fluorescence images of ZO-1 (green) staining in RTEC. Scale bars, 10 µm. (D) Quantification of ZO-1-positive cells, shown as C5a treatment relative to control, corresponding to the RTEC shown in (C). Data were analyzed by unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-test [n = 4 individual images (×200 magnification) per group]. *P < 0.05, ****P < 0.0001. All results shown are representative of three independent experiments.