Research Article

Enterococcus faecium TIR-Domain Genes Are Part of a Gene Cluster Which Promotes Bacterial Survival in Blood

Figure 8

Presence of tirE1-hp1-tirE2 increases bacterial survival and proliferation in human whole blood ex vivo. (a) tirE1-hp1-tirE2 enhances bacterial proliferation in human whole blood. After 3 h of exposure of E1162 and E1162ΔtirE to whole blood, the fold change in CFU is significantly higher for E1162 compared to E1162ΔtirE, where the inoculum is set as 1. Data shown represent pooled data from 3 donors (inoculum 20 µl at OD600 0.4, t-test, 2-tailed, ). (b) tirE1-hp1-tirE2 enhances proliferation in human whole blood over time. E1162 and E1162ΔtirE were incubated in blood for indicated time points. Data represent quadruplicates from one healthy donor and are representative of 3 independent experiments in different donors. (inoculum = 20 µl at OD600 0.4, t-test, , ).
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