Fig. 3

Limit of detection for synthetic communities of bacteria spiked into whole blood. The CFU/ml of each bacterium in the community was determined prior to blood spiking (solid black bars). The CFU/ml of bacteria recovered after each step in the saponin-blood treatment protocol was determined; addition of 0.85 % saponin with no further washes (solid grey bars), addition of saponin at 0.85 % with the addition of a 1 ml sterile double distilled water wash (diagonal lined bars), or addition of saponin at 0.85 % with two washes with 1 ml sterile double distilled water (solid white bars). Each organism was spiked into whole blood alone to verify the limit of detection observed in Table 3 (D)