Fig. 2

BfmR modulates A. baumannii V15 competitiveness against E. coli MC4100 and A. baylyi ADP1. Quantitative evaluation of inter-bacterial competition assay displaying a recovered number of prey: E. coli MC4100 (a and b) and A. baylyi ADP1 (c and d). Competition was performed with the following strains used as the aggressors: A. baumannii V15 (WT), ΔbfmRS, and ΔbfmRS complemented with the plasmids pbfmRS or pbfmR (a and d); WT, Δhcp, Δhcp strain complemented with the plasmid phcp, ΔbfmRSΔhcp mutant, and ΔbfmRSΔhcp mutant complemented with the plasmid phcp (b and 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 < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001; n.s., not significant. Hcp gene in plasmid phcp was induced using IPTG concentration of 0.1 mM