Fig 6.

Agglutination of cells to one another and abiotic surfaces.A and B. The autoagglutination of the modification mutants was measured in the absence of media by growing them on solid media and transferring them to PBS. The total autoagglutination was calculated as the OD₆₀₀ of the top 1 ml of cell solution compared to the total OD₆₀₀ following 16 h incubation. Autoagglutination was found to be the highest in CD0240, CD0241, CD0242 and CD0244 mutants and could be restored on complementation, the fliC and CD0243 mutant were similar to the parental strain.C. The agglutination phenotype of the mutants was also investigated in their interaction with abiotic surfaces, strains were grown in 24-well plates for 5 days and the relative amount of cells bound was measured with crystal violet stain. All of the modification mutants showed a marked increase in binding to the surface of the wells compared to 630Δerm and the fliC mutant.