Fig. 3

5448AP does not impair DC maturation. MoDC were infected with 5448, 5448AP, or 5448Δemm1 for 1 h. Extracellular bacteria were killed by substituting the media with antibiotics for additional 23 h. MoDC phenotype (A, C–G) and viability (B) were evaluated via flow cytometry. Representative histograms for each marker are shown in (A). The maturation process was evaluated by assessing the expression of CD40 (B), frequencies of CD80⁺ (D) and CD83⁺ (E) cells as well as CD86 (F) and HLA-DR expression (G). H Principal component analysis of intracellular proteins 6 h and 24 h post infections with indicated strains. Each dot represents one donor (n = 10). The ellipses indicate the calculated 95% probability region for a bivariate normal distribution with an average center of groups. The data in (B–G) are displayed as box plots. Each dot represents one independent experiment with cells from one donor (n = 10). The level of significance was determined using the Kruskal–Wallis test with Dunn’s posttest. FMO, fluorescence minus one; MFI, mean fluorescence intensity