Figure 5

SspA inhibits bacterial adherence and invasion but enhances bacterial migration across a bEnd.3 cell monolayer. Deletion of sspA increased bacterial adhesion to (A) and invasion of (B) the bEnd.3 cell monolayer but decreased the ability of bacteria to migrate across the cell monolayer in vitro (C). The data are presented as the means ± standard deviations of the results of three independent experiments conducted in triplicate. Statistical significance was assessed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The asterisks indicate the level of statistical significance (*, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001; ****, p < 0.0001).