FIGURE 4.

The impact of EB interactions with fungal cell wall components on C. albicans binding and infectivity in HeLa cells. C. trachomatis EB were incubated with diluent (H₂O) or fungal cell wall components, mannan (Man), β-glucan (βglu) or laminarin (Lam) for 1h at 37°C prior to incubation with 3h old C. albicans hyphal cultures (A,B) or inoculation of HeLa cell monolayers (C) as described in the methods. (A) Following incubation, Ca/CtE cultures were harvested for IFA. Chlamydia- Red: mouse anti-Chlamydia MOMP/rabbit-anti-mouse Alexa Fluor 594, Candida: DIC 200× magnification. (B) Average intensity/um² of chlamydia staining represented in panel (A). (C) The percentage of HeLa cells infected with EB exposed to diluent or fungal cell wall component alone or in combination. The data shown represent the means ± SEM of three independent repeats with 3 biological replicates/repeat (n = 9). An asterisk (^∗) indicates a significant difference between the experimental sample and the diluent control (p ≤ 0.05) as determined by ANOVA and two-sample independent T-tests.