Fig. 5: Antibiotic treatment of kinetoplastids with and without endosymbionts.

Four kinetoplastids were treated with rifampicin and observed for their behaviour on treatment with 20 µg/ml rifampicin (A). B. saltans and N. esmeraldas possess an endosymbiont, while T. theileri and Z. costaricensis do not. Two kinetoplastids, B. saltans and N. esmeraldas were treated with 100 µg/ml streptomycin (B). The graph shows number of cells before treatment (0 h), cells without any treatment (24 h) and with antibiotic treatment (24 h). The bars are average of three independent experiments. Statistical significance was calculated using ratio paired T-test.