Figure 3.
Lysis of individual cells. Cells were tethered to coverslips as described in Fig. 2. At t = 0, expression of the lysis genes from the plasmid pS105A52G was induced by IPTG and arabinose. Single frames were chosen from the recordings of two representative cells and are depicted here to illustrate the process of cell lysis. Starting from the time point indicated (Left), single frames were captured every 200 ms. After induction of the lysis genes, the tethered cells rotate at high and constant speed (first row). About 20 min after induction, rotation of the cell abruptly slows and stops completely within 1–3 sec (second row). Cell lysis, because of digestion of the cell wall by the λ R endolysin, occurs within several seconds after the sudden stop in rotation (third and fourth rows). A digitized recording (quicktime movie) can be found as Movie 1, which is published as supplemental data on the PNAS web site, www.pnas.org.