Figure 3. Inhibition of pRS01 conjugation by Ll.LtrB group II intron.

Top, mating diagrams of IL1403 donor with IL1403-FA^R recipient. Donor cells contain pRS01 (erm^R), with ltrB interrupted by a tet gene (red cross), co-expressed with Int^- or Int⁺ (red bar) relaxase (brown and orange bars) from plasmid pCY20. Bottom, representative conjugation result. Spotting of 10 and 5 μl of donor plus recipient conjugation mix (two replicates per donor) on plates containing FA and Erm to select for transconjugants. Conjugation frequencies are shown (n = 2, p<0.05 based on two-tailed t-test with two-sample unequal variance).