Fig. 5: Granulocytes display temporal and spatial metabolic heterogeneity during biofilm infections.

Mice subjected to craniotomy or PJI were sacrificed at days 3, 7, and 14 post-infection, whereupon Ly6G⁺ granulocytes were recovered from galea and PJI tissue. Intracellular metabolites were extracted from cells and analyzed by LC–HRMS (n = 15 mice/infection model/time point of which three animals were pooled, resulting in five biological replicates per time point). A Percentage of significantly altered metabolites among all detected chemical species and B PCA plots for each time point are shown. Craniotomy and PJI samples were assessed for metabolic changes longitudinally (H, I) as well as by time point across models (C–E) and presented as a heat map of log-transformed normalized peak intensities. F, G PCA plots of longitudinal analyses are also presented. Data analyzed by MetaboAnalyst with (H, I) one-way ANOVA or (A, C–E) two-tailed t-test. Only significant comparisons are shown (p < 0.05). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.