Cell lysates or gradient centrifugation fractions were analysed by sodium dodecyl sulfate–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and Western blot as previously described (Troese et al., 2011 (link)). Commercially available primary antibodies targeted β-actin (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz, CA), GAPDH (Sigma-Aldrich), GFP (Invitrogen), HaloTag (Promega), TGN46 (Sigma-Aldrich) and Rab10 (Sigma-Aldrich). Rabbit antisera against A. phagocytophilum proteins P44 (IJdo et al., 1999 (link)) and APH0032 (Huang et al., 2010b (link)) were described previously. Rabbit antibody targeting a surface-exposed epitope of Asp55 (Ge and Rikihisa, 2007 (link)) was a kind gift from Yasuko Rikihisa (Ohio State University, Columbus, OH).