Figure 4.
Characteristics of proto-spacers located on the blaKPC -IncF plasmids. (A) Schematic showing the CRISPR-Cas system in KP8. Genes are depicted as arrows in different colours and the IncF plasmid-matched spacers are shown as colourful boxes. (B) Two subtypes of proto-spacer 5, in which the nucleotide sequence in red represents the base mutation. (C) Conjugation frequencies of different proto-spacers. (D) Conjugation frequencies of single and combined proto-spacers. The results of the conjugation assay are presented as means ± SD from six independent experiments. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001 indicate significant differences between the strains and the control group (pUC-Empty) as determined using one-way ANOVA with Dunnett correction(C). Statistical significance between the two strains was assessed using a two-tailed Student’s t-test with Bonferroni correction of the GraphPad Prism8 software. * p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant (D).