Extended Data Fig. 8: Neither labelling cells with constitutively expressed fluorescent proteins nor the deletion of pilH or pilB has an appreciable impact on the intrinsic growth rate of cells.
From: Bacteria solve the problem of crowding by moving slowly
a, The leading edge of six different subsurface colonies inoculated with equal fractions of CFP labelled and unlabelled strains (left), YFP labelled and unlabelled strains (middle), and CFP labelled and YFP labelled strains (right) after 16 h of incubation at room temperature. WT and ∆pilH colonies are shown on the upper and lower rows respectively. In all six colonies, near equal proportions of each cell type are present at the colony’s leading edge indicating that expression of a fluorescent label has a negligible impact on each strain’s competitive ability. Unlabelled strains are imaged using brightfield and appear grey. b, Relative fitness of three YFP labelled test strains (WT, ∆pilH and ∆pilB) compared to a CFP labelled WT reference strain mixed together in liquid culture. The relative fitness of each test strain was not significantly different from 1 at either 3.5 or 7 h post-inoculation (p > 0.05, one sample t-test, n = 3, Methods). Error bars indicate standard deviation of 3 replicates.
