Fig. 5: Growth curve and gene expression patterns of non-mucoid and mucoid phenotypes of strains GH1-13 and FZB42 with or without pBV71.

a, b Growth curves of WT strain GH1-13, mucoid variants MU3 and PC, a reverse complement COM, WT strain FZB42, and the transconjugant FZB42p cells on glucose (a) and lactose (b) at the final concentration of 0.2% (w/v) in M9 media. A statistically significant difference between the growth rates of cells of the non-mucoid and mucoid phenotypes with lactose used as the sole carbon and energy were determined by two-tailed t-tests with P-values < 0.05, from comparative tests for 6 sole carbon sources (glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose, galactose, and glycerol) as shown in Supplementary Fig. 3. n = 3 independent experiments (Supplementary Data 3). The mean and standard deviation (error bar) are plotted for all graphs. c Semi-quantitative RT-PCR results show variations of the transcription of the quorum-sensing ComQXAP and Rap-Phr systems with expression levels of prapD in pBV71 in non-mucoid and mucoid variants of strains GH1-13 and FZB42 with or without pBV71. The uncropped gel images are shown in Supplementary Fig. 12. Expression levels of prapD and chromosomal rap–phr genes at the early exponential phase (5 h culture) of the cells are highlighted in the blue box. NA, rapF2–phrF2 genes not available in strain FZB42. d Aligned amino acid sequences of N-terminal translation initiation sites and C-terminal pheromone peptide signals deduced from the coding regions of strains GH1-13 and FZB42. In strain GH1-13, PhrA, and PhrF2 sequences are categorized by a manual curation process.