Figure 3.

The vscF, encoding needle protein, is diversely involved in the secretion of effector proteins in V. parahaemolyticus. Intracellular cAMP (A) and the translocated amounts of CyaA-fused protein (B) were quantified after infection with V. parahaemolyticus strains. GAPDH served as internal reference. “+” or “-” refers to a strain harboring pMMB207-vp1683/1686-CyaA expression vector (+) or not (-), NC served as cell control group. Densitometry analysis was performed for relative quantification (C). ****P < 0.0001, **P < 0.01, and *P < 0.05. Sequence alignments of vscF were performed using the DNAMAN program. Dark blue boxes and asterisk represents 100% conserved residues; pink boxes represent 80% conserved residues; light blue boxes represent 60% conserved residues (D).