Fig. 3. DksA is required by B. burgdorferi to infect mice.

Mice were injected with WT CE162, the dksA mutant (Mut), OY463 (Com1), or OY479 (Com2) at 10,000 spirochetes per animal. Mice were sacrificed at 3 weeks post-inoculation and samples were collected as indicated in Table 1. Spirochete burdens were quantified using qPCR via absolute quantification. The values represent the average copy number of B. burgdorferi flaB normalized per 10⁵ mouse β-actin gene copies. Data are presented as the mean values ± standard deviation. The asterisk indicates statistical significance using one-way ANOVA (P < 0.05).