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Fig. 6 | Journal of Biomedical Science

Fig. 6

From: The role of the bacterial protease Prc in the uropathogenesis of extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli

Fig. 6

Effect of motility increase on the ability of the ExPEC prc mutants to cause UTIs. (a) Construction of prc mutants constitutively overexpressing flhDC. The ∆lacZ∆prc strains of the ExPEC strains RS218, CFT073, and UTI89 were transformed with the plasmid pFlhDC (Table 1). The flhDC operon encoded in this plasmid was fused with a lac promoter. Without any induction, the flhDC overexpression driven by leaky promoter activity was strong enough to improve the bacterial motility of the prc mutants. (b, c, and d) Transurethral cochallenge of mice with the prc mutants of the indicated ExPEC strains with and without flhDC overexpression. At 48 hpi, the bacterial counts in the bladders and kidneys were enumerated and differentiated by spreading the homogenized infected tissue onto LB agar plates with IPTG and X-gal. Horizontal bars indicate the median level of the bacterial counts. The dotted line represents the limit of detection

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