Fig. 6.

Analysis of changes in the transcription of genes involved in iron-uptake pathways and coding for virulence factors in P. aeruginosa cells in RPMI medium for 3 h in the absence or presence of A549 epithelial cells. The genes piv, amrZ, aprA, toxA, and exoY code for virulence factors (62).The data were normalized relative to the reference gene uvrD and are representative of three independent experiments. Results are given as the ratio between the values obtained in the presence of the epithelial cells over those obtained in their absence after 3 h of incubation in RPMI medium. The data represent 3 independent experiments with 3 technical replicates.