Fig. 4

CDI mediated A. baumannii intra-species competition. a-c Quantitative evaluation of inter-bacterial competition assay displaying a recovered number of A. baumannii clinical strains II-g (a) and II-h (b and c). Competition was performed with the following A. baumannii V15 mutants used as the aggressors: ΔbfmRS, ΔbfmRSΔhcp, ΔbfmRSΔcdi^V15, ΔbfmRSΔhcpΔcdi^V15 (a and b). The II-h strain was also challenged with the ΔbfmRS, ΔbfmRSΔhcp, ΔbfmRSΔcdi^V15, ΔbfmRSΔhcpΔcdi^V15 mutants, which were complemented with either pbfmRS or pbfmR (c). E. coli DH5α was used as a negative non-competitive control to enumerate bacteria numbers if there were no competition. Error bars represent standard deviation. The horizontal lines represent mean value. Values were calculated from at least three independent experiments. ***, p < 0.001; **, p < 0.01; n.s., not significant