Fig. 1: C. difficile spore adherence and internalization into intestinal barrier in vivo.
a, b Representative confocal micrographs of fixed whole-mount of a colonic, and b ileum mucosa of C57BL/6 mice infected with 5 × 108 C. difficile R20291 spores for 5 h. C. difficile spores are shown in red, F-actin is shown in green and nuclei in blue (fluorophores colors were digitally reassigned for a better representation). Micrographs are representative of n = 3 independent mice. c Adherence of C. difficile spores to colonic and ileum mice mucosa obtained of four fields from n = 6 and n = 7 tissues of independent mice, respectively. d Distance of n = 499 and n = 40 adhered spores from the colonic epithelial apical surface or from the villus tip respectively visualized of two fields from n = 2 mice each. e Quantification of internalized C. difficile spores in the colonic and ileum mucosa obtained of mice described in c. f Distance of internalized spores from the epithelium surface for the colonic mucosa (n = 71) or from the villus tip to the ileum mucosa (n = 34) obtained of mice described in c. White arrow and empty arrow denote internalized and adhered C. difficile spores, respectively. Scale bar, 20 µm. Error bars indicate the mean ± S.E.M. Statistical analysis was performed by two-tailed Mann–Whitney test; ns, p > 0.05; ****p < 0.0001.
