Figure 2

B. subtilis biofilm transcriptome response to mechanical tear and subsequent mounting of a reporter response. (A) graph representation of the most up- or down-regulated genes, in Log(2) of the fold change compared with untreated biofilm. Mean p-value for all changes is 0.007 ± 0.014. (B) A representative response of B. subtilis biofilms to tear, measured as relative luminescence units (RLU) derived from expression of the luxABCDE operon under the control of pst-sigA promoter. This graph shows maximal signal achieved after 30 min. Data labels show mean values. P-value constitutive vs. +tear < 0.05; P-value -tear vs. +tear < 0.05. (C) A representative kinetic measurement of the response to tear driven by pst-sigA. Blue line represents pst-sigA reporter strain and orange line represents negative control (wildtype strain). P-value < 0.05 in all points (n = 3).