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closeRoute of infection question
Posted by spopov on 04 Jan 2011 at 22:47 GMT
It is not clear why did the authors chose to use the s.c. route of challenge known to mainly bypass the initial phagocytic responses while the whole purpose of the study was to reveal the role of these responses? Is it because the Ames 35 is so attenuated that it makes other route challenge doses too high?
The Ames strain was reported by R. Lyons to remain fully virulent after the LT deletion, meaning that the Ames 35 virulence should not depend on LT. Why did the authors decide to use this strain to demonstrate the role of LT? Isn't it imperative to obtain a comparative data with the LT deletion mutant to prove the LT relevance and address this issue?
Why was the bacterial load in Fig. 2 measured at 2x10^7 spores within 24 to 32 h? Why is the interval so broad? Did some mice die? Where are the corresponding mortality curves? Based on Fig. 1, at this dose the majority of mice were expected to be dead at the time of sampling, and the results, therefore, would be biased toward survivors.