Table 1.

Colony phenotypes and papillation characteristics in different E. coli strains

Strain	Colony sizea	Adjustabilitywith arabinose	Maximum frequencyof transpositionb	Distribution ofpapillae on colonies	Papillae number dependency on the number of growing colonies per platec
DH10B	Large	Limited	High (up to ~100 papillae)	Centered in the middle	Somewhat dependent
DH5α	Large	Good	Highest (up to ~300 papillae)	Even	Largely independent
JM109	Medium	Good	Intermediate (up to ~40 papillae)	Even	NDd
HT321	Large	Moderate	Low (up to ~10 papillae)	Even	ND

^aLarge colony size: up to ~5 mm of diameter. Medium colony size: up to ~3 mm of diameter.

^bThe maximum frequency of transposition is specified in this table as the number of papillae per colony grown at 30°C for 115 h on a standard papillation medium containing 0.1% arabinose.

^cSee Additional file 2.

^dND, not determined.