Fig. 3

NTHi binding of immobilized vitronectin in the absence or presence of heparin. Human plasma vitronectin was bound to glass-bottomed dishes. NTHi was incubated on the plate-bound vitronectin for 30 minutes, and then the dishes were washed three times. In some experiments, plate-bound vitronectin was pretreated with heparin before incubation with NTHi. NTHi was stained with LIVE/DEAD®. Live NTHi is stained green. BSA was used as a negative control. Representative fluorescent micrographs show that both NTHi strains (ATCC 19418 (a) and HUSM 0481 (b)) attached to plate-bound vitronectin and that this attachment is blocked by heparin. White bars represent 10 μm. Summaries of the numbers of attached NTHi (per field at 1,000× magnification) are shown in (c) for ATCC 19418 and (d) for HUSM 0481. Error bars represent SEM in three independent experiments that gave similar results. **p < 0.01