Fig. 2: Recipient’s capsule and serotype influences conjugation efficiency.

A Conjugative plasmids included in the analysis. The plasmids are presented on a cladogram representing the evolutionary relations between the MPF types³⁶. Note that p580 encodes two separate MPF systems of type F and T, but the F-type locus is interrupted by a transposon. Plasmid names colours match the colours of the points in the other panels. The three first columns correspond to the mean conjugation efficiency (n = 3) measured from E. coli to each of the three wild type strains. Additionally, we indicate the predicted incompatibility (Inc) groups, the antibiotic used for selection (R), either Ertapenem (E) or Kanamycin (K), and the TraN allele for F-type plasmids. B Log₁₀-transformed conjugation efficiency (CE) relative to the associated Δcps mutant (by subtraction of the log₁₀-transformed values) by capsule serotype of the recipient, from E. coli DH10B donors. Points represent the mean of independent triplicates after log₁₀-transformation and subtraction, with colours and shapes corresponding respectively to plasmids (A) and strains. Solid line at y = 0 represents the conjugation efficiency of Δcps mutant. We used paired Wilcoxon tests (two-sided) to assess statistically significant differences. C Same as (B), but with K. pneumoniae strains as donors. The shapes of the data points represent the genotype of the donor strain. Source data are provided as a Source Data file 3 (Conjugation from E. coli) and Source Data file 4 (Conjugation from K. pneumoniae). Panels showing data of the individual biological replicates are presented in Supplementary Figs. S4 and S5. ***p < 0.001; ns p > 0.05.