Fig. 4: Abolishment of the slow-growth and stalk elongation phenotypes of C. crescentus ΔphoB and ΔpstS mutants upon heterologous expression of E. coli pitA.

A Phase contrast images of wild-type (MAB257), ΔphoB (MAB258) and ΔpstS (MAB259) cells carrying the pitA gene under the control of a xylose-inducible promoter, grown to mid-exponential phase in PYE medium in the absence (− PitA) or presence (+ PitA) of inducer (scale bar: 3 μm). The schematics at the bottom illustrate the levels of phosphate (black dots) in the cytoplasm of the respective strains. Red arrows indicate PitA transport activity. B Combined beeswarm and box plots representing the distribution of stalk lengths in cultures of the strains shown in (A). The boxes give the interquartile range, the notches indicate the median values, and the whiskers extend to the 5th and 95th percentile. Number of cells measured: WT (313), ΔphoB (622), ΔpstS (519) in the absence of xylose (- PitA) and WT (485), ΔphoB (372), ΔpstS (567) in the presence of xylose (+ PitA). Numbers indicate the statistical significance (p values) of differences between strains (unpaired, two-tailed t-test).