Figure 4.

Coexistence of different colony morphotypes during long-term incubation in a single culture. (A) Colonies plated from a 150-day-old culture: normal or cream-colored colony morphotype (C), white morphotype (W), and minicolony morphotype (M). (B) Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of SfiI digested chromosome of wild-type (WT) cells and the three new morphotypes (C, W, and M); a phage lambda (λ) size standard is at left. (C) Pie charts reflecting population composition (%) during different times of incubation (days) of each morphotype, each color represents a different colony morphotype (see text for descriptions).