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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Mol Microbiol. 2010 Nov 2;79(1):166–179. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2958.2010.07436.x

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Swarming is a collective form of surface motility in Pseudomonas aeruginosa that benefits the colony but requires individual cells to synthesize and secrete rhamnolipid biosurfactants. (A) Frames from time-lapse imaging of swarming. See video SV1. (B) Swarming colonies achieve much higher cell numbers than colonies grown on hard agar (1.5 % agar, which prevents wild-type swarming, P<2×10−9) or colonies of mutants lacking the rhlA gene necessary for biosurfactant synthesis (P<2×10−9), showing that swarming benefits the colony.