Figure 3.—
Stability of plasmids evolved in S. maltophilia P21 (pP21) and under DH protocol (pDH) in naive ancestral host P21anc. In each P21 graph (lineages A–E), the dashed line represents the stability of the ancestral plasmid in the ancestral host (one stability assay for each of the five independent ancestral cultures, A–E). In these P21 graphs, solid lines represent results from single-stability assays for three randomly chosen plasmids per lineage. In the DH graphs (lineages A–E) solid lines represent the results of triplicate-stability assays for three randomly chosen plasmids per lineage; error bars represent standard deviations. •, ▪, ♦: plasmids 1, 2, 3. Since the five DH lineages were founded from generation 70 of each of the five P21 lineages (Figure 1), ancestral plasmids for P21 and DH protocols were the same, and their stability data (dashed lines) are not repeated in the DH graphs. P-values < 0.05 ( B, D, and E) suggest that the stability dynamics were significantly different between plasmid isolates.