Figure 5.

Effect of adenosine catabolism on QS cheater control. (A) Total growth of co-cultures of the P. aeruginosa PAO1 wild-type and the isogenic lasR deletion mutant. (B) Enrichment of the lasR mutant in co-culture. Co-cultures were initiated at ~1% mutant frequency in minimal medium with either casein, adenosine, or casein and adenosine as sole C-sources, modeled after Dandekar et al. (2012). Cultures were incubated at 37°C with shaking. Total growth and enrichment of the lasR mutant were quantified by plate counts. The lasR mutant contained a trimethoprim resistance marker at a neutral chromosomal site that allowed differentiation from the wild-type (Wilder et al., 2011). The presence of the marker does not affect growth (Wilder et al., 2011). The dotted line indicates the starting mutant frequency as an average of all three conditions. Error bars indicate standard deviation of the mean of three experimental replicates and are too small to be visible in some instances.