Fig. 1.
The ∆rel strain is impaired in valve colonization in an experimental model of E. faecalis infective endocarditis. E. faecalis OG1RF and the isogenic (p)ppGpp mutant strains ∆rel, ∆relQ and ∆rel∆relQ were tested in a rabbit model of experimental infective endocarditis. Each symbol represents the aortic valve bacterial load in each animal at the experiment endpoint. The horizontal bars show the arithmetic mean of the log10-transformed values. Ordinary one-way ANOVA was used to determine whether the difference among the means was statistically significant (P=0.0180). *, P=0.0151 by Tukey’s multiple comparison post hoc test.