Fig. 2

The knockout strains of CRISPR-Cas components show impaired colonisation in in-vivo model organism (mice) (A) The mice were orally gavaged with wildtype (WT) and CRISPR (ΔcrisprI, ΔcrisprII, and ΔΔcrisprI crisprII) and cas operon (Δcas op) knockout strains. Bacterial burden in different reticuloendothelial organs of these infected mice was estimated 3 days post-infection by plating the organ lysates, followed by CFU analysis. (B) The sera of infected mice were pooled and the concentrations of proinflammatory cytokine IFN-γ was determined using ELISA. Results are represented as mean ± SD pooled sera samples (2 mice per pool) for each infected and control group. One-way ANOVA (Dunnett’s multiple comparison test) was used to determine significant differences between the WT and knockout strains, in two independent experiments, with at least 3 replicates in each. Error bars indicate SD. Statistical significance is shown as follows: *, p ≤ 0.05; **, p ≤ 0.01; ***, p ≤ 0.001; ****, p < 0.0001; and ns, not significant