Fig. 5: Heterogeneous tailocin production ensures infrequent competitive dominance in microhabitats.
From: Fragmented micro-growth habitats present opportunities for alternative competitive outcomes
a Equivalent growth of P. protegens CHA0 and Pf-5 cultivated separately or together with 4 mM succinate in liquid suspension (n = 7 replicates). b Per droplet productivities of both strains in solo and mix droplets after 48 h (normalized to the median of the solo droplets). P-values from two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum tests. c Expected (from solo droplets, without competition) and observed mix droplet productivities after 24 h, indicating almost equal competitive substrate sharing (square-root transformed AF-values). d Effect of tailocin lysis in individual droplets. Top: mixed growth without lysis; middle, partial lysis of Pf-5 (in magenta); bottom, total lysis of Pf-5 in the presence of CHA0. Time points selected from time-lapse imaging. Strain-specific fluorescence (biomass) development shown on the right. e Variation in mScarlet-I (Pf-5 solo droplets) fluorescent background sets outlier range, above which Pf-5 lysis is assumed (red-circled data points, >2.5 times standard deviation of the residual variation to the linear regression line). f Inferred fractions of Pf-5 lysis (bars show means ± one SD) in the presence of CHA0 compared to Pf-5 solo background (n = 3 replicates, p-value from two-sided t-test on combined t = 24 h and t = 48 h outlier fractions). Source data are provided as source data file.
