Fig. 4: EHEC requires L-arabinose to trigger uptake and utilisation of D-ribulose.

a Transcriptional reporter assay of EHEC transformed with the pMK1lux-P_aau plasmid cultured in MEM-HEPES alone or supplemented with 0.5 mg/mL D-ribulose (blue) or ʟ-arabinose (green). Data are depicted as luminescence units (LUX) divided by optical density (OD₆₀₀) of the culture at each timepoint. b Growth analysis of wild type EHEC in M9 minimal media supplemented with 0.5 mg/mL D-ribulose, 0.1 mg/mL ʟ-arabinose or a mixture of both sugars (grey). c Comparative growth analysis of ∆aau performed in the exact same conditions as (b). Error bars for reporter assays and growth curves represent the standard deviation from mean of three independent experiments (n = 3 biological replicates). Non-linear regression was used to fit growth models, from which growth rate constants k were extracted and compared using a two-tailed student’s t-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.