FIG 1.

Virulence of D. zeae MS2 wild-type and mutant strains. (Top) Photographs of representative infected plants. (Bottom) Virulence scores. For each strain, 10 or 11 banana seedlings with 3 or 4 leaves were infected, and disease was scored 7 days later (see Materials and Methods and Fig. S1 in the supplemental material for details). The red dots indicate the median virulence scores. The blue asterisk indicates that the virulence score distributions between the wild type (WT) and the pipA mutant (ΔpipA) differed significantly (Mann-Whitney U = 6; n₁ = n₂ = 10; P < 0.01, two-tailed). For ΔpipA pC, the pC indicates the infecting bacteria carried the pipA-complementing plasmid pCpipA. Bacteria carrying the plasmid control vector pBBR1MCS-5 (vect).