Quantitative measurement of uptake of Bb revealed that the bpiP mt has higher percentage of phagocytosis by activated macrophages (F480+) and dendritic cells (CD11c+) than control strains, suggesting that the increased clearance of bpiP mutant during early stages of infection could partly explain the significant reduction in bpiP burden in infected C3H/HeN mice by quantitative real time PCR (Fig 7A) even at day 14 post-infection. The gene discussed is ITGAX; the disease is infection.