Figure 9. Increased flagellation minimally affects reversal frequency, but increases % track linearity in H. pylori.

(A) Dot plots summarizing the number of reversals per second acquired for wild-type B128 and isogenic flagellar mutants in viscous PGM solutions (15 mg mL⁻¹). Mean values of reversals per second are shown as bolded black lines and error bars indicate one standard deviation from the mean. The fliO_ΔC shows a significant difference to wild-type B128 (K-S, p = 0.0114). (B) Dot plots summarizing individual ratios of median forward swimming speed to median reversal swimming speed acquired for each bacterial cell swimming in PGM (15 mg mL⁻¹). Ratios are plotted on a log₂ scale and median values are shown as bolded black lines. (C) Bar histograms showing % track linearity (%TL) for wild-type B128 and isogenic flagellar mutants in PGM (15 mg mL⁻¹). Error bars show one standard deviation from the mean and mean %TL values are summarized in Table 5. *K-S p <0.05 was considered significant and ns = no significant difference.