The C-terminal region of BgaA is sufficient to facilitate BgaA mediated pneumococcal adherence.

<p>(A) Schematic indicating regions of BgaA deleted to generate BgaAN and BgaAC. Dashed lines indicate regions deleted and numbers indicate amino acid boundaries of the deletions. The signal sequence, shown as the black box, and the Gram positive anchor domain, shown as a grey boxβ, were retained in both constructs for proper localization of expressed proteins. (B) R6BgaAC has significantly higher adherence to NHBE cells as compared to R6Δ<i>bgaA</i>. Adherence of R6BgaAN is not significantly different when compared to R6Δ<i>bgaA</i>. (C) CO6_18BgaAC has significantly higher adherence to NHBE cells as compared to CO6_18Δ<i>bgaA</i>. Adherence of CO6_18BgaAN is not significantly different when compared to CO6_18Δ<i>bgaA</i>. Adherence data are the means ± SD of three independent experiments performed in triplicate. Statistically significant differences were assessed using a two-tailed Student's <i>t</i>-tests. * p≤0.03, ** p≤0.002.