Promastigote differentiation and infectivity.

<p>(A) Proportion of metacyclic promastigotes in stationary phase cultures, assessed using the PNA assay. Values shown are the means ± SD from three independent experiments. *, differed significantly (p<0.05). (B) Western blot analysis of extracts of 10⁷ promastigotes at stationary phase of growth probed with α-HASPB. α-Cysteine Synthase was used as a loading control <a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002695#ppat.1002695-Coombs1" target="_blank">[56]</a>. (C) Infectivity and survival of promastigotes in peritoneal macrophages <i>in vitro</i>, infected at a ratio 5∶1, with the infection rates being assessed after 1 and 5 days. *, differed significantly (p<0.01). (D) Lesion progression in BALB/c mice inoculated with 5×10⁵ stationary phase promastigotes. Values shown are the means ± SD from 5 mice. *, infection level of Δ<i>atg5</i> differed significantly from WT (p<0.01) and Δ<i>atg5</i>::<i>ATG5</i> (p<0.05). (E) Morphologies of cells isolated from mouse lesions and analysed by SEM. Scale bar: 2 µm.