STAT3 and infection: Furthermore and as previously shown, infection of cultured cells did not alter the endogenous levels of other signaling components including Erk [9–11, 28, 32, 33], cJun [9, 33] [10, 11], p38 [9–11], or STAT3 [28] (Fig 3F), which are robustly activated by S. Typhimurium [9–11, 28, 32, 33].