FIG 6.

rio3 is important for nasopharyngeal colonization in a pneumonia mouse model. (A) Ribosome footprint of the blpK operon. Arrows in blue represent sORFs identified by Ribo-RET, and arrows in gray represent ORFs annotated previously. (B) Growth curve of wild-type and mutant strains in CDM over a span of 6 h. (C) Six-week-old BALB/c mice were inoculated with 1 × 10⁷ CFU/25 μL of either the wild type, the rio03^GGG mutant, the rio03^GGG complemented strain, or the Δsrf-02^18–207 mutant. The nasal passages were collected at 24 h postinfection, homogenized, and plated to determine the bacterial burden. Statistical significance was determined using Kruskal-Wallis analysis. **** denotes a P value of <0.0001.