Figure 1

Expansion of S. aureus in a modified motility assay.

This assay produced similar results to a previously described spreading assay and showed S. aureus can spread radially across low agar plates in 9 cm diameter Petri dishes when incubated at 37 °C. Movement is conserved in strains from diverse agr types (the agr type of each strain is detailed in Table 1). All the wild type strains tested produced dendrites apart from RN6390B and Newman consistently produced the most dendrites. agr mutants do not move probably because they do not produce surfactant. The presented images are representative of 3 independent biological replicates.