Details of the <i>B. melitensis hfq</i> mutants and their growth characteristics.

<p>A. Structure of the <i>hfq</i> locus on <i>B. melitensis</i> 16 M chromosome I. In the Δhfq, the coding region of <i>hfq</i> was deleted and replaced by a kanamycin resistance cassette. The coding region of <i>hfq</i> together with its native promoter cloned to pBBR1MCS5 yielding the complementation plasmid pBBR1-hfq. The percentage similarities were obtained using pairwise BLAST analyses that compared <i>B. melitensis</i> Hfq protein sequence with those of other <i>Brucella spp</i>., alpha-proteobacteria, <i>Escherichia coli</i>, and <i>Salmonella typhimurium</i>. B. Growth characteristics of <i>B. melitensis</i> Δhfq strain. <i>B. melitensis</i> wild-type, 16 MΔhfq, and 16 MΔhfq-C strain were cultured in TSB (pH7.0) at 37°C, and the OD600 was measured at 2 h intervals. Each graph represents the mean of three independent biological replicates grown on three different days. The error bars represent the standard deviation (SD) of the optical density at each time point.