Fig. 1: Galactose mediates B. salamandrivorans attraction and adhesion.

a B. salamandrivorans zoospores bound on microtiter plates coated with crude and enzymatically treated skin lysate of sloughed fire salamander skin. Pellet and supernatant fractions were obtained by protein precipitation. b B. salamandrivorans zoospores bound on microtiter plates coated with different carbohydrates. GlcNAc = N-Acetylglucosamine, GalNAc = N-Acetylgalactosamine. a, b Negative control = wells coated with coating buffer only. Three technical replicates were performed per biological replicate, with three biological replicates in total. Figures represent the mean and variation (standard deviation) of the biological replicates. Black circles represent biological replicates. The significance of the difference between the distributions is shown by *** p < 0.001, based on Tukey’s multiple comparisons with the glht function in R package multcomp, comparing (two-sided) negative binomial models. c Chemotaxis of B. salamandrivorans toward free carbohydrates. The sugars D-glucose, D-mannose, lactose, and D-galactose were tested as attractants at a 0.1 M concentration, using a traditional capillary tube test. Water was used as a vehicle and control attractant. Genomic equivalents (GE) of B. salamandrivorans zoospores in the capillaries were quantified after 90 min using quantitative realtime PCR. At least three technical replicates were performed per biological replicate, with three biological replicates in total. Box-and-whisker plot presents the mean and variation in chemotaxis of the biological replicates; the median is shown as a vertical line inside the box, the first and third quartiles shown as the lower and upper edges of the box, respectively, and the minimum and maximum values shown as whiskers. An * indicates a significant difference compared to the water control, whereas + designates a significant difference compared to galactose; with adjusted p-values obtained via Tukey’s multiple comparisons corrections. a−c Individual P-values are shown in Supplementary Tables 2, 4, and 5. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.