Fig. 3: Intrabacterial growth and bdelloplast topology effects of B. bacteriovorus strains.

a Growth of B. bacteriovorus wild-type (WT) and Δbd1075 strains inside E. coli S17-1 pZMR100 prey bdelloplasts. B. bacteriovorus strains express the cytoplasmic fusion protein Bd0064-mCerulean3 to allow visualization of intraperiplasmic predator cells. T = hours elapsed since predators and prey were mixed. Scale bars = 2 µm. Images are representatives of cells from 3 biological repeats. b Curvature of B. bacteriovorus WT and Δbd1075 strains during predation upon E. coli S17-1 pZMR100 as depicted in a. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. ****p < 0.0001; two-tailed Mann–Whitney test. c Examples of Δbd1075 cells which appear to stretch and deform the E. coli prey bdelloplast at T = 2.5 h during 3 repeats of predatory timecourses as shown in a. These represented ~9.2% of total bdelloplasts. Scale bars = 2 µm. d Area, e circularity, f length, and g width of E. coli prey bdelloplasts during predation by WT or Δbd1075 predators. For data in c–g, n = 169 cells (1 h), 134 cells (1.5 h), 150 cells (2 h), and 160 cells (2.5 h) for the wild-type strain and n = 205 cells (1 h), 160 cells (1.5 h), 245 cells (2 h), and 250 cells (2.5 h) for Δbd1075 from 3 biological repeats. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. ns non-significant (p = 0.053); **p = 0.0039 (Area) or p = 0.0083 (Length), *p = 0.031; two-tailed Mann–Whitney test. Data presented with medians +95% CI and full data distributions are shown in Supplementary Figs. 12 and 13, respectively. Source Data are provided as a Source Data file.