Presence of IS<i>1301</i> in the IGR of UK disease and carriage isolates from South East England.

a<p>P-value was calculated using Fischer's exact test.</p>b<p>NG, non-groupable.</p

Presence of IS1301 in the IGR of MenB and MenC isolates from different clonal complexes.

<p>Presence of IS1301 in the IGR of MenB and MenC isolates from different clonal complexes.</p

Expression of capsule biosynthesis genes.

<p>A: Relative levels of <i>siaA</i> (black bars) and <i>ctrA</i> (white bars) mRNA transcripts measured by qrtRT-PCR. P<0.005 (*) for differences in <i>ctrA</i> mRNA levels in IS-8+ and iIS+69+ versus the controls, using Student's <i>t</i> test. B: β-galactosidase activity was determined for <i>siaA</i> translational fusions. C denotes a control without an IGR. Results are average of three independent experiments, and error bars indicate the standard deviation (SD).</p

Presence of IS<i>1301</i> in the IGR of carriage isolates and disease isolates.

<p>Carriage (C) and disease (D) isolates were analysed for the presence of IS<i>1301</i> in the IGR depending on the numbers of loci the STs share with ST-269. Black bars represent strains with IS<i>1301</i> in the IGR and white bars show the frequency of isolates without IS<i>1301</i> in the IGR. Numbers above bars indicate the total number of isolates.</p

Genetic relatedness between STs within cc269.

<p>Neighbor-net constructed from the concatenation of the seven MLST housekeeping genes of <i>N. meningitidis </i><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0009413#pone.0009413-Maiden1" target="_blank">[4]</a>. The major groupings (indicated with green, black, and yellow circles) represent the number of allelic differences (1, 2 and 3 respectively) from the core ST-269 allelic profile. The tree was made using the Split-Tree4 software <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0009413#pone.0009413-Huson1" target="_blank">[29]</a>.</p

Polymorphic IGRs do not influence capsule expression or complement resistance.

<p>A: Relative amount of capsule detected by FACS. Results are shown as mean fluorescense index (MFI; calculated as the geometric mean multiplied by the percentage of positive cells). B: Survival in 8.33% human serum after 1 hour incubation at 37(C. Experiments were performed in duplicate on at least three independent occasions, and error bars indicate the SD. White bars represent isogenic control strains without IS<i>1301</i> in the IGR.</p