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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biochim Biophys Acta. 2013 Sep 27;1843(8):1551–1558. doi: 10.1016/j.bbamcr.2013.09.010

Figure 4.

Figure 4

Curli subunit sharing between adjacent cells, or interbacerial complementation, is made possible by the nucleation-precipitation mechanism of curli fiber assembly. A csgB mutant (or csgA+ donor strain) secretes soluble CsgA into the extracellular milieu. CsgA from a csgB mutant can polymerize on a csgA mutant (or csgB+ acceptor) that is presenting CsgB on the cell surface when grown in close proximity to one another on a plate. The left panel shows a csgB mutant streaked near a csgA mutant, and on the edge of the CsgB-expressing streak there is a Congo red staining region.