Fig. 2

Folic acid supplementation prevents developmental growth defect of a C. elegans folate deficiency model via an E. coli abgT-dependent route. Body length of WT and gcp-2.1 mutant C. elegans at L4 developmental stage raised on DM agar plates seeded with (a) WT E. coli (control), WT E. coli treated with 128 μg/mL SMX, ΔpabA mutant, and ΔabgT mutant, (b) ΔpabA mutant, ΔabgT ΔpabA double mutant, ΔpabA (abgT OE), and supplemented with increasing concentrations of folic and (c) folinic acid. Error bars represent standard deviation of C. elegans body length, where n ≥ 40. Asterisks (*) indicate test statistic of unpaired non-parametric Mann–Whitney t tests, where ****p < 0.0001, ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05. By two-way ANOVA analyses, we find that there is a significant interaction effect of strain type (F = 102.67, p < 0.0001) and folic acid concentration (F = 123.55, p < 0.0001) on C. elegans gcp-2.1 body length. Over-expression of abgT is conferred by transformation with a high copy number plasmid, pJ128. ΔpabA and ΔabgT ΔpabA strains are transformed with the empty vector, pUC19