Fig. 6: Bacterial membranes of E. coli MG1655 strain stiffen mechanically upon polymyxin incubation. | Nature Communications

Fig. 6: Bacterial membranes of E. coli MG1655 strain stiffen mechanically upon polymyxin incubation.

From: Antibiotic polymyxin arranges lipopolysaccharide into crystalline structures to solidify the bacterial membrane

Fig. 6: Bacterial membranes of E. coli MG1655 strain stiffen mechanically upon polymyxin incubation.The alt text for this image may have been generated using AI.

a AFM topographs (top) and elastic modulus maps (middle) of an OM patch from the E. coli MG1655 strain before and after polymyxin E (60 mg/l) incubation for ~ 10 minutes. The elastic modulus of the patch increases upon polymyxin E treatment. The violin plots (bottom) show the modulus distribution of elastic modulus maps of OM patches (n = 5) before and after polymyxin E treatment. Dots indicate the mean modulus value, and vertical lines represent error bars as standard deviation. Difference between horizontal dashed lines (blue) denotes the positive increase in average Young’s modulus (Δ<E > ). Scale bars, 200 nm. b Same for an OM patch from an E. coli MG1655 MCR-1 strain. Scale bars, 200 nm. For both in panel A and B, nonparametric two-sided Mann-Whitney U test is used for comparing the modulus distributions before and after polymyxin E treatment. The change in the membrane modulus is significant for the E. coli MG1655 WT strain (p = 0.0079), whereas the change for the MCR-1 strain is insignificant (p = 0.4). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

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