Neisseria meningitidis undergoes PilC phase variation and PilE sequence variation during invasive disease
Neisseria meningitidis colonizes the upper respiratory tract (URT), enters the blood stream, and reaches the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). In the present study, we show that bacteria isolated from the URT adhere better to human epithelial cells, compared with bacteria from blood or CSF, which suggests that important changes of virulence-associated proteins take place during bacterial dissemination. P
