Figure 1. Internal spot placement and cell length are more variable in mycobacteria compared to C. glutamicum .

. (A) M. smegmatis mc² 155 cells with two polar and one internal spots of VanBODIPY staining; note variable cell lengths and eccentric internal spot placement. (B) C. glutamicum cells with three spots are of similar size with a centrally located internal spot. Scale bar = 2 µm. (C) Plotting cell length versus frequency for 3-spot cells (n = 148) from all three species of bacteria, shows there is significantly more cell length variability in mycobacterial populations compared to C. glutamicum (p<0.01 Wilcoxon signed-rank test). (D) More than 95% of C. glutamicum cells contain an internal spot within the central 20% of the cell length, compared to only 70% of mycobacteria. Data for 3-spot cells was collected from three independent experiments.