Fig. 2. Coculture with donor induces recipient esx4 transcript levels and requires recipient ESX-1 activity.

(A) Experimental design for SNP-guided RNA-seq of DCT. The ESX-1_mut strains have targeted deletions of eccC_b1, encoding the ATPase required for ESX-1 secretion activity and required in the recipient for conjugation. The four strains were grown individually and in mixed cultures of WT × WT, WT × ESX-1_mut, or ESX-1_mut × WT. Conditions, processing, and analysis are as indicated at right. (B) Heat-map cells of WXG100 genes from esx4 (esxUT), esx1 (esxBA), and esx3 (esxHG), with changes upon coculture shown as log₂ insets. For each mating, the donor and recipient genotypes are shown, and the conjugal mating proficiencies are indicated. A housekeeping gene (rpoB) is included as an independent expression control.