Figure 4. BMDMs acquire significantly more bacteria via bacterial transfer than phagocytosis of extracellular bacteria.

(A) Colony forming units of intracellular bacteria 2 hr after synchronized infection or purified recipient cells after synchronized cell-cell transfer. three independent experiments performed in triplicate. Mean ± standard deviation. (B) The number of bacteria per cell in either BMDMs infected with extracellular bacteria or recipient BMDMs infected via bacterial transfer 2 hr post inoculation. three independent experiments with 50 infected cells counted per sample per experiment. Each data point represents an infected cell. Bar represents the mean. (C) Representative image of a recipient BMDM. The bacteria are depicted in green, DAPI in blue and the plasma membrane (wheat germ agglutinin) in white. Student t-test. **p<0.01, ***p<0.0001.