Figure 7.

TatD deficiency impairs the ability of pneumococci to degrade NETs in vitro. (a) Human neutrophils were stimulated with PMA (25 nM) for 2 h to release NETs. This was followed by treatment with cytochalasin D (to prevent phagocytosis). The cytochalasin D treated samples were incubated with D39, D39ΔtatD, D39ΔendA, D39ΔendAΔtatD pneumococci at a multiplicity of infection of 1 for 1 h. NETs were visualized as described in the legend to Fig. 6. All the images shown in panel a are uncropped. (b) The images were scored and quantitated as described in Materials and Methods. Error bars are represented as mean ± sem. A representative of two independent experiments is presented. The data was analysed statistically using one-way ANOVA (with Dunnett’s multiple comparison test). None of the images in panel a have been cropped.