The CFU assessment results showed that there was no significant difference between the agarose-coated PAO1 group and agarose-coated ΔPA3611 group at 2, 4, or 6 weeks post-infection, which demonstrated that the decrease in bronchial epithelial cell EMT may be attributed to the decrease in PA strain virulence due to PA3611 deletion (Figure 7B). Here, SMOX is linked to infection.