We also compared phosphorylation levels after infection with the sarA:gp130-complemented strain to a ΔsarA strain carrying the empty plasmid vector; our results show that while infection with the ΔsarA strain does lead to increased STAT3 phosphorylation at 24 hpi, there is still significantly more phosphorylation after infection with the chimeric-complemented strain at 24 hpi (Figure S2B). Here, IL6ST is linked to infection.